Keeping a spare house key can be very convenient in case you misplace your main set of keys. Convenience is good – we can all agree on that. However, you might want to ask yourself if the hiding place where you’re placing your spare key is too convenient, meaning that it can be easily found by any criminal or burglar. Please, don’t sacrifice the safety of your home or business for convenience. The last thing that you want is for a criminal to find the spare and easily enter your home whenever they choose. Here’s the best (and worst) places to secure your spare keys.

Best Places to Leave Spare Keys

With a trusted Neighbor or Friend

Your neighbors are fantastic allies to help prevent burglaries. Give your neighbor your spare key. Make sure there’s no information printed on the key that’s linked to your home address. This is one of the most secure spots that you can hide your keys at, as it’s safe inside someone else’s house. However it’s not the most convenient, as you’re going to need to be able to get in contact with the neighbor if you need the key at the spur of the moment.

In a magnetized lock box placed under your car.

The wide majority of burglaries occur during the day, from 10am to 3pm – usually when people are at work. Try hiding your spare key in a magnetized lockable box that’s stuck to the underside of your car. That way, when you’re away from home with your car, so is the spare key.

Under a dog house.

Burglars loathe dogs. The natural protective instincts (and fantastic sense of detective level smell) in dogs have made them an ideal guarding companion for generations of humans. No sane burglar is going to want to go near any sort of dog house. By utilizing the deterrent nature of this fact, you can hide your spare key under the dog house to evade the possibility of it being picked up by a criminal.

Fake Sprinkler

The competent alternative to a fake rock, a fake sprinkler system looks exactly like a real one, and can match any real one already at your house to look like a part of a functioning system. It’s rare that any burglar would assume to look here.

Worst places to leave Spare Keys

Wallet

This is such an awful spot to keep your spare keys. If your wallet is lost or stolen, anyone who finds it can likely find your home address (often on driving licences) as well as a key to enter your house as smoothly as you ever do when you come home from work. Simply put: Don’t. Do. It.

Under your Welcome Mat

This is the very very very very stupid mistake that people do, over and over again. Don’t hide your key here. Ever. We promise, this is the first spot that everyone looks.

Under a fake rock.

OK. We don’t understand why these fake rocks are continued to be made. They almost never look real, and stand out like a sore thumb in an otherwise bare lawn or facade. Burglars love these fake rocks.

Under a flower pot right by your door

Again, the convenience that this spot poses to you, can be equally enjoyed by a burglar, who will be extremely happy about how easy and quickly they can enter your home.