• The best place to hide a key is beyond your front porch.key image by Bosko Martinovic from Fotolia.com
  
  When people consider where to hide a key, the first places that they think of are under the door mat or flower pot by the front door. You might as well keep your keys in the front door as any burglar will likely find the hiding places in less time than it takes you to hide it there. Hiding your key in an obvious place is not a bad idea, but it is best to avoid the clichés or anywhere that they would hide a key in a cartoon.
  
  

House

• People tend to hide their keys within the immediate vicinity of the front door. Not only is this the first place a burglar will likely look, you are probably within plain sight every time you retrieve it. Aside from the front porch, there are a number of places on your house that actually do make good hiding places for a key. For instance, underneath the bottom siding panels of your house is usually about an inch of overhang where the wood comes together with the concrete foundation. This is an ideal place to hide a key because prowlers are unlikely to trace their hands around the entire perimeter of your house. The drain pipes also make a good hiding place because you can not see in them, but you can very easily hide a key with a bit of tape and retrieve it when needed.
  
  

AC Unit

• If you have an outdoor AC (air-conditioning) unit or barbecue, you might consider using one as a hiding place. For a free-standing AC unit, hide the key around the back side near the base or tucked securely under the unit. For a window air-conditioning unit, simply slap a bumper sticker on it and hide the key underneath. You can cut a key-sized hole in a piece of felt so that the key shape is not visible through the sticker, but since bumper stickers tend to be very adhesive, you might have to consider it an emergency key as you will probably have to cut the sticker to get to the key. As mentioned, barbecues can also be great hiding places providing that you do not put the key into the barbecue, forget about it and then torch it the next time you have an outdoor get together. To secure a key to a barbecue, try tucking it inside one of the wheels or taping it inside part of the frame.
  
  

Buried

• Burying a key is another hiding place that people do not think of, or do not execute well. Putting a key under a pile of rocks can be a good idea, but you have to hide it well enough so that someone is not going to find it without effort; likewise, you want to be able to recover it in a pinch as well. The best way to bury a key is to tie a piece of yarn or string to the key so that you can recover the key when needed. In this fashion, you could even bury the key in a planter on the porch; prowlers probably will not bother dumping out your potted plants.