When I was little, my sister and I did not get along. At all. We still don’t and I really regret that, but it’s out of my hands now. Anyway, she liked to go through my stuff, so I needed a way to secure it. My bedroom door wouldn’t latch correctly, never mind lock, so I needed a better place to stash things.
Being a big fan of diary-keeping, my diaries were the items I was most concerned with – like government secrets, they could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands (namely, the hands of my little sister).
But with no way to lock my door, what was I to do? Enter my hidey hole. I can’t remember when I found it, or even how, and it was probably not the safest stash, but it worked for my purposes.
My room and the room next door shared a furnace shaft (one shaft, two vents). There was one of those awesome old wall vents in each room, and the woodwork around mine was loose. If I gently pried it back from the wall, I could hide things on top of the vent shaft.
Like I said – probably not the safest hiding place, but I never lost a diary and a little plaster dust never hurt anyone. 🙂
My sister had her own hidey hole. It was under a loose floorboard in our attic. Our attic was full of that ground-up newspaper insulation, though, making it considerably messier and a much bigger pain to get to.
I still love the idea of having a hidey hole like the one I used to have as a kid, but as a grown-up, I’m not sure what I would stash in one. What about you – what sort of hidey hole did you have (or dream about having) as a kid?
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Suddenly they all died. The end. 
I would think as a mom you’d want to stash candy bars that you didn’t have to share with your kids. 😉
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Oh, I hide plenty of those from them. Usually they stay in my purse till I can find a find a few spare minutes to sneak off to the bathroom. You don’t really realize how important bathrooms are until they’re the only place you can go to be alone. 😉
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I had a hidey hole beneath the sleeper of a railway line. Luckily for me a disused line – not that it would have stopped me.
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That’s an interesting place to have a hidey hole. Most of the few remaining rail lines around here are for commercial use – I think the nearest passenger line is three hours from me. We have no concept of public transportation out here in the sticks.
There was still a rail line running through the town where I work, up until the last week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a train go through there, but the tracks were still maintained. I happened to pass them a day or two ago and discovered they’d been torn out. It made me kind of sad, because there was a time when a railroad could make or break a town, and now they’re all disappearing.
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Same here. Most smaller villages haven’t had a train for over fifty years. I had to share my hidey hole with a hedgehog called Roy. (My name for him)
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I remember very vaguely the train that ran through my hometown because I could see the tracks from my bedroom window. The tracks are all gone now, though, and it’s probably been close to thirty years since we’ve had one. There are still a few freight lines that run through nearby towns, but that’s it. It really saddens me to see history vanishing like that.
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They’re going to fix it over here. Apparently they’re going to spend 45 billion, yes that’s billion pounds for a new line which will take ten minutes off the journey time between London and Birmingham.
It’s always good to see out taxes wisely spent.
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They’ve poured money into our aging highway system here, but not enough, in my opinion. They keep rerouting interstates so that they go around towns instead of through them to save time, but I’d rather they just left things alone. I don’t think the two-minute time savings is worth the millions of dollars spent to move the road.
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I can think of better ways of spending all those billions – like on a national health system that’s about to fall apart.
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Agreed. Of course over here, it’d be nice to see our whole Congress replaced so that maybe something useful would be accomplished with all that money, but that’ll never happen.
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Dream on, just like I do over here.
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I didn’t have a secret stashing place, but I loved reading about yours.
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Thank you! Every kid needs a hidey hole, I think. 🙂
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A hidey-hole seems like a great asset from a prying sibling. I can hide things in my house in plain sight because my husband isn’t terribly attentive about what’s lying about. Some days that’s a good thing and sometimes not.
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My husband is far more attentive than I am, so hiding things in plain sight wouldn’t work for me. If he didn’t see it, one or more of my kids would – and they’re terrible at keeping secrets. 😀
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A hidey hole is a great place to keep journals. I wasn’t as thoughtful. I kept mine in the classic under the bed.
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That could have worked for me, but I never thought of it. My bed in high school was a full mattress on the floor – no box spring, no nothing, just the mattress. That would have been a great hidey hole, but I never thought of it. 🙂
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It’s not as great a place as I thought. My mom found it one day while cleaning. Read it, then yelled at me for the contents. It was years before I journaled again.
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I used to write in mine all the time, but it’s been just about a year since the last time I wrote in my diary. I really need to get back to doing that because otherwise, I’ll try to look back on these years and there won’t be anything written down for me to remember. If it weren’t for my diaries, I probably wouldn’t remember anything from middle school and high school.
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Same here. I am always fascinated at reading my old journals.
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I have a whole shelf full of them. I wonder what my kids’ll think if they ever read them someday.
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Hopefully they will get to know you a little better.
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Hopefully. Either that, or they’ll decide I’m completely bat-crap crazy. 😀
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Don’t remember having a hidey hole. Maybe because we moved so often. As a teenager, I hid my diary under my mattress, but that hardly counts.
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That’s too bad you lacked a hidey hole! I’m beginning to feel a bit spoiled that I didn’t move around much as a kid, even though a lot of my peers didn’t move much, either. It relieves me to hear my husband say that short of our house burning down or blowing away, he won’t move again. Why did you move around a lot?
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I always wanted a hidey-hole, but our houses were too new for any cool places. My current house was built in 1930, so there are a few places I could stash stuff now!
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You know, I don’t actually know how old my house is. The one I grew up in, I mean. The one we’re moving out of was built in 1920 and the one we’re moving into was built in 1904. Okay, I snooped around online and found out that the house I grew up in was built in 1925. Of course, our new house was remodeled a few years ago and we’ve been remodeling the one we’re leaving since we bought it, so most of the hidey holes are probably gone now.
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I know this journal entry was forever ago but I wanted to respond.
My mother searched for my diary all the time and found it. She’d then leave it out for me to see that she found it. What I started doing was hiding it in HER bedroom in a purse she stopped using. My parents divorced early in my life so she was a single mother with two latchkey kids. Having time to myself to get the diary was no problem at all. 🙂
I looked at an old journal of mine the other day. The first entry is December 31st, 1999. I read a few pages of it and put it away for later. I’ve got at least 30 old sketchbooks and two old handwritten poetry books. I’d never let them go.
When I was a child my mother wrote poetry and doodled on scratch paper. I’d kill to get my hands on just one.
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I love responses, no matter how old the post! 😀
My mother died when I was ten, so she never had cause to go looking for my diaries. I still keep one, but it’s no longer exactly hidden. My old ones I keep on my desk, so that if I ever need to look something up, they’re within easy reach. Hiding your diary in your mother’s bedroom is sheer brilliance – I know I’d never think to look for my kids’ diaries in my room! 🙂
It sounds like you keep sketchbooks like I keep diaries. I’d never let mine go, either. My mother also wrote poetry when she was young, but I’m lucky enough to have some of her writing. I once found a whole notebook of poetry, and I found a couple of her diaries, too. They were great help in trying to figure out a woman I barely knew.
Do you still keep diaries?
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I mostly keep it online because I can look up old entries easier. It’s not like reading a book. If I’m looking for a time in my life where things have changed for me emotionally I want to be able to go back to before that time and read what was going on. I had a major emotional life change in my healing path a few years back. I wanted to see if there was any clue that it was coming or any clue to how I was processing things. I was able to go back to my online journal and read about 6 months worth of entries that showed how I got to where I was. I could see clues, bits and pieces of the whole. On several occasions I’ve been able to do this. I keep a handwritten diary, but it is mostly about medical issues. I don’t keep a handwritten diary about other things, not at this time, but I do have a few of my old ones.
For a long time I was mostly able to express myself through art, so I stopped handwriting and set myself free by drawing and painting. I drew what I felt. Now, I can blog my feelings without watering them down. I blog as if no one is reading. I can blog with full truth, but I don’t feel full relief until paint hits paper. I’m determined to have my blog printed off page for page, as is, and bound as a hardback book.
Through out history mankind has felt compelled to write down his thoughts. Sometimes writing is to ease the mind of worries, other times its for family to remember them when they pass on. But always humans have felt the need to record their thoughts on paper, which is most cherished after their death. Oh and we must not forget, many times these writings are off limits to others or hidden under loose boards, in a fire hazard area or some other place human eyes won’t easily detect. 🙂
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Keeping your diary online is a neat idea. I’m in the process of typing up my old ones for ease of reference, but I have a long way to go yet. I’ll never get rid of the old ones, though, because some of them have things taped in and some have drawings and, while I could scan them, my scanner kinda sucks. My drawing skills are zilch, but I used to do it anyway, regardless of my lack of talent.
If you’re determined to have all your entries bound into a hardback book, try Blurb (I swear I’m not a shill, I just really like their products). They can be a bit expensive, but the quality is outstanding. I’ve ordered several photo books from them in the last four years, and they all turned out great. You download their bookmaking software and then you have a variety of bookmaking templates at your fingertips. There’s even one for blogs – you follow the prompts to import your blog entries and it puts everything into a handy book format. I’ve been meaning to do that with this blog because I have a bunch of entries that are private now, but I don’t want to lose them should, say, WordPress’s servers crash or something.
I express myself best in my writing (not necessarily when I speak, though). Maybe someday, after I’m dead and gone, my kids will read through my stack o’ diaries and find they didn’t know me as they thought. That would be something I wouldn’t mind watching from heaven (or wherever I end up). 🙂
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I promise I don’t mean to keep bothering you…… and I swear if I don’t get off line and get something done today I’ll regret it…but hey, there will be an online record of my life dealings for today right? Anyway. All the sketches are part of my blog. I scan each and every one and they are a part of a 13 year blogging path. I know……13 years. I found an old print off weeks ago that confirms I’ve been online under the name Sundrip for 13 years. For that time I’ve uploaded my artwork next to written words.
Despite the path I’ve chosen for diaries, I see the huge value in a handwritten diary. My hands are not able to do both art and writing as I have Lupus and Fibromyalgia. I am limited with what I can do with my hands so I choose what is most important to me and that is the art with typing out my thoughts. But if I were able to also write down my thoughts as well as paint and sketch I’d do it and I’d upload them as a photo blog of sorts. I’d do my writing the same as I do many of my sketches and most of my reading. I’m a book worm myself and think a home uncivilized, boarding barbaric if there are no books LOL. How did they live? I wouldn’t have purchased the house. I would have yell Barbarism! Bar-baaaa-rismmmm! then spat on the welcome mat and walked away disgusted that anyone would expect me, me! to accept *that* type of house. But, I digress.
Anyway if I were to write in a private diary I’d do so the way I sketch and read. I’d do it in my comfort chair situated in my home with the best view of the fish tanks, the window that lets me see the stars or the sunny sky. It’s the chair that has my best throw on it, where my cat curls up in my lap and sleeps as I turn pages or sketch my thoughts into paper.
You know, soon I’ll have to write a blog entry about how I used to hand write. 🙂 I believe I’ve been moved to talk even more about my personal experience with writing my thoughts down in a journal. I haven’t visited that topic in quite awhile. I think I’ve been sparked. I’ll let you know when I do. I’d like to know your thoughts on it.
I’ll be back to read more of your blog. I’ve enjoyed our communications very much and like your ideas about writing. I came here because I saw something about an October challenge. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be another challenge so I came here to see. What I found was a whole bunch of stuff I want very much to return to read.
Thank you for sharing your inspiration with others and encouraging us to move forward.
Until again,
Faith
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You’re not a bother at all! 🙂 And barbaric is a great way to describe a home with no books – I don’t know how people can live that way.
Your chair area sounds lovely. I’m planning to make my office a nice, cozy area like that. It sounds like we share a process – I’m much more comfortable working in a recliner than I am at my desk.
Thank you for the kind words about my blog! I hope you’ll enjoy anything else you return to read. 🙂
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