Top Tips for Finding "Buried" Treasure • Firsthand Memories

Discover “buried” treasure when downsizing, decluttering, or purging items from a household or estate.

Household hidden treasure

Did you know?

Past generations (and even some present ones) often had the habit of squirreling away and hiding treasure in the home.
It’s smart to employ a little patience and do some detective-like sleuthing before tossing items to trash or to the donation box.

Why? There are many reasons why someone might tuck away personal items of value in the home:

Distrust of Banks and Safe Deposit Boxes
Postponing a Decision
Ease of Access
Hiding From Discovery
Purposeful Saving
Being Forgetful or Disorganized

Unlikely places of safekeeping and stashing a cache have been used for hundreds of years. Below are a few true stories that illustrate.

Proudly Saving

I remember my mother telling me that, she lived most of her life in a time when not many women worked outside the home. She, like her mother and grandmother before her, scrupulously saved a few dollars or cents out of their monthly household allowance. The custom in those early years was for a working husband to dole out an amount from the family budget to the wife, for her to run the household. For many wives, having any of the allowance left-over, was not an easy task.

Mom would regularly gather together her saved money to build up the contents of her “secret” little white envelope. This envelope was hidden on the side of an old jewelry box at the back of her underwear drawer. The “secret”, she explained, wasn’t from my dad, the secret was from her own mind! “Out of sight, out of mind”, she would say. “If you don’t see it, then it becomes a wonderful surprise when you need it, and there it is!”

Mom was so proud of this purposeful saving in her secret envelope! She said that having that cash gave her a deep sense of independence and power. It meant she was good with money and knew the value of it. It allowed her the pleasure of being able to buy special presents for her family whenever she wanted, without having to ask my father for extra money. And sometimes, when they would plan a vacation, she would joyfully show my father how much she had saved, so they could use it for extra spending-money on their trip.

Pirate secret treasure

Safe Keeping

A friend of mine told me a story of having received a beloved gift of a gold ring containing all the birthstones of her family members. One time, she was wearing the ring when her family took a vacation to Mexico. Rather than attract undue attention when out to dinner in public, her husband suggested she leave the gemstone ring inside a rolled-up pair of socks inside her suitcase in the hotel room. After her trip, my friend didn’t have occasion to wear her treasured ring for quite a while and it remained inside the sock roll.

Months later, when the family was helping to do a major decluttering project, that rolled-up pair of socks must have been perceived as “old” and somehow got tossed out! When it came time to wear her special ring again, those socks were nowhere to be found. Sadly, her treasured jewelry is gone forever, probably laying in a landfill.

Hiding From Discovery

Another friend told me the story of her siblings helping their aging parents move to a smaller house. A few of the sisters took many boxes of her mother’s old clothing to a thrift store supportive of a special charity. A few weeks later, a worker from that thrift store recognized one sister on the street and stopped her. The worker exclaimed how grateful they were at the shop, to have found over $400 in the pockets of that donated clothing!