How to Hide and Protect Your Valuables in an RV or a Camper

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Even though traveling in a van or an RV is usually pretty safe, break-ins do happen. It is always good to have insurance ready for cases like these, but many items we have also have sentimental value, that no money can replace. This also includes things like external hard drives and memory cards full of lovely holiday photos.

Check out my tips and ideas below to make sure, that even if the break-in happens, your valuables will be safe.

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Leave as many valuables as possible to home and take the full advantage out of cloud storage

Unfortunately, this is the safest way, although not all the full-time dwellers have this possibility. If you have to carry some important papers with you, for example, scan your documents onto your computer and then to cloud storage or send them to yourself in an email.

Do the same with your passports, visas, birth certificates, etc., as this is important not only because of burglaries but fires too and in case you lose any of them.

In case you lose your phone or a computer or they get stolen, write down on a piece of paper or email that you can access anywhere, the most important phone numbers and addresses you might need in an emergency. This includes the phone & policy number of your insurance company!

Instead of external hard drives or a theft-vulnerable laptop, I would look into a cloud storage to keep all your important photos safe – especially if your income depends on them!

However, some stuff you really just can’t or don’t want to leave, so lets have a look how we could hide them from unwanted fingers!

Hide in plain sight

When a burglar breaks into your moving home, they won’t have loads of time to go through your stuff. With a fear of getting caught, they are looking for easy wins. This way one of the best places to hide your valuables is, in fact, in plain sight, inside the most mundane looking objects!

This one is a classic, but works. Place a toilet roll inside a mason jar, fill around it with something like sweets, or rice, and just hide your valuables inside the roll.

How about a hidden compartment under a plant? This one looks nice as well. Check the great tutorial from Instructables here.

Handyman came up with this great idea – just take an old mayonnaise jar, paint it with matching original color inside and you are good to go. Check their site here.

Stashimal! Another fab idea from Instructables. Check the tutorial out here.

If you don’t fancy any DIY, there are some ready-made hiding places too which you can order from Amazon. Here are some of my favorites:

False fixtures

These are of course easier in a normal house, but even a camper has some excellent places.

Hide some important things behind or under a drawer with a tape or build a hidden compartment like this tutorial from Instructables shows.

The Family Handyman suggests to glue something that usually would be in the drawer to work as a handle to lift the lid of as shown below.

Another cool idea from The Handy Familyman. Add a few extra pipes underneath your kitchen sink, no one except a plumber will notice a thing!

Not so good ideas

Some hiding places work better than the others. I would heavily advise against a portable safe unless it is bolted through the floor to the frame of the van or RV, as portable ones are too easy to just grab with, and they are usually worth grabbing as they most likely have something valuable inside. The burglar will have time to look into opening it later.

Don’t put anything under your mattress or pillows either, this one is too known and one of the first places a thief would look into. Same goes to clothing drawers and cash inside books. This is why I wouldn’t build any book safes either, as the burglars just have a habit of pulling everything of the shelf.

So many people have been recommending freezer as a good place to hide stuff, but I feel it has been recommended too much and the thieves are too aware of this. Also, if you are lucky enough to have a freezer in your van, I highly doubt it’s big enough for any space to be wasted!

Other avoidable places people recommend; underneath the trash bag in the trash can. I’m sure it would protect your valuables from thieves, but what if the trash bag breaks and leaks any liquids to the bottom? Yikes!

Also one often recommended place for cash is inside your lip balm tube. Again, I bet the thieves won’t find your stash, but personally I think they are too small items – easily lost and not very practical anyway.

Of course you could take an advantage out of these outdated hiding places. Place a stash of fake money or fake valuables underneath your mattress, for example – this way the burglar hopefully leaves quicker thinking they got all they needed!

Let the thieves know that you have nothing to steal

True, this might not be true, but for someone who is looking for an easy grab, it’s not really worth to spend time finding out. Print these out and place them on your dashboard or by the door, anywhere that a possible thief would see them.

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