A diary is supposed to be a place where you can express your
ideas and confide your feelings. Writing your way through a problem
can be very therapeutic. The best way to make sure it isn't found
is to make sure no one sees your diary to begin with.
Steps
- Avoid the typical hiding spots where most people know where to
look:
- The top shelf of your closet
- In your pillowcase
- Amongst other books
- In a lock safe
- In your handbag/purse/old backpack
- Behind your TV or computer
- Under a pile of stuffed animals
- In your underwear drawer
- In the little space under your bureau
- In your bed, between the mattress and the frame
- Put your diary inside a desktop computer. Most computers have
lots of empty space inside the case, and very few people think to
look inside them. People, and parents especially, may not be very
good at dealing with technology and not even realize it can open or
that there is any space inside. Just be sure not to store it
somewhere where it will damage your computer, start a fire or block
airflow to components that need cooling.
- Tape it to the underside of a chair, desk, table, or interior
of a drawer.
- Put it under a loose floorboard in a hardwood floor (best for
old houses).
- Conceal the cover of your diary with a book cover (make it look
like a very boring book so that if anyone finds it, they won't want
to read it!) and hide it amongst your other books.
- Make a hollow book and put your diary inside.
- Act natural when anyone comes into your room as if you have
nothing to hide. This way, that person will be less likely to look
around for your diary!
- Make a decoy. If a nosy person comes into your room and starts
snooping, get a little notebook and quickly write 'my diary' on it
and then drop it onto your bed. Casually leave the room. Maybe she
or he will read the decoy diary and, finding very little there,
simply leave the room and you will have nothing to worry about. Add
bogus entries every so often, as if they had really happened, but
that the snooper can recognize as fantasy (such as your fantastic
trip to San Francisco, or how you spent two years in a foster home,
or how you rescued a dog from the pound and now it is your best
friend). This will make them wonder if other things you wrote were
true or fantasy, and you can tell people that you want to be a
writer so you make up a lot of things. Later, when you're done with
that diary, go back and put a code by the fantasy entries before
you hide it permanently. The famous writer Anais Nin did this for
years!
- See if there is enough room to stick the diary between the back
of a framed picture and the wall. Nobody looks behind
pictures.
- Lift a removable ceiling panel (if you have one) and place your
diary (or anything else you have to hide) on one next to it. Why
would anybody look in your ceiling?
- Slip your diary inside a newspaper roll, and set the newspaper
next to your chair, on the shelf, wherever a newspaper looks
natural but discreet. An example of a bad spot is on an end table,
where it may seem to invite someone to pick it up, open it, and
find the diary by mistake.
- Write your diary in a completely ordinary-looking school
notebook (you might even put school notes on the first few pages)
and keep it with other school stuff.
- Consider the alternatives. If there are absolutely no good
hiding spots you can access easily or your nosy person has already
discovered them all:
- Consider writing your diary in a shorthand or code that only
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