My family’s legal documents are being kept somewhere at home, and its kinda weird to think about, like zero security, I doubt its even fireproof, definitely not waterproof, some flood is gonna destroy it.
My sister inherited my dad’s big fireproof gun safes and things like birth certificates are in there (at this point maybe they should be on our person).
Papers, please.
Yea… I feel like this isn’t just one country, as technology gets more developed, every government now wants to use more biometrics, face scanning, fingerprinting, mandatory ID. Eventually, we might DNA checkpoints to verify people.
Banks have made it really difficult to rent safety deposit boxes lately. It used to be a common account benefit but I can’t find any within a reasonable distance of me since 2023, and none which are included as an account benefit. A fireproof safe is good enough and the types of documents I put in it aren’t truly irreplaceable anyways, just really hard/annoying to replace. I doubt many people use their fireproof safe for truly valuable items that would be attractive to thieves. My fireproof safe doesn’t even have a proper lock.
I’ve considered a safe, but I’ve heard the paper contents may mold if left in there too long. Currently too lazy to manage that.
You need some dessicant, they make packages of it specifically for managing humidity in safes. It’s real low maintenance.
I have all my important documents in a fire rated safe mostly because whenever I need to get one of them I remember “oh yeah I put that in my safe”. I don’t own anything valuable that could fit in the safe. As someone who works on safes though I would recommend anyone who wants one for burglary protection to bolt it down if possible and don’t show anyone you have it. I’ve seen the aftermath people’s 200+ pound safes dragged through the house and out the door. Also if you own guns and have kids I would absolutely recommend a safe to put them in. Check your local laws as well because here in California starting in 2026 gun owners can be charged if they don’t have their guns locked securely and someone in their household who should not have access to guns gets access to their guns.
This is not a thing one should answer in a public forum.
My safe code is 1234. What are you using?
Keep in mind that many “fireproof” safes misrepresent their capabilities and the fireproofing itself can severely damage or destroy safe contents in a fire.
Tl;dr: the contents slow cook and soak in a mixture of water and whatever else was present for hours to days. Depending on the severity and duration of the fire, plastics will melt, metals will tarnish, and unprotected paper, wood, and similar contents will be destroyed.
Most more affordable safes are fireproofed via a layer of drywall material. Drywall is composed of gypsum, otherwise known as calcium sulfate dihydrate: CaSO4·2H2O .
The fireproofing doesn’t come from any direct insulating properties but the hydration of the gypsum. When exposed to enough heat, the water bound to calcium sulfate begins to unbind and boil out. The interior of the safe will remain at 100°C or less as the external heat energy from the fire is absorbed by this dehydration/phase change process, releasing water as steam.
This turns your safe into a big steamer/(low) pressure cooker. The safe boils during the fire, then sits and “cooks” for hours afterwards as the area cools down. The safe keypad will be inoperative, so you’ll be reliant on the backup key working. If that mechanism is damaged, the manufacturer or a locksmith will need to open it. No matter what, the contents will remain in a hot, damp environment for hours to days.
I put everything in our fire safe in silicone bags so I hope that does the trick.
That’s exactly what I’d recommend! The contents will crisp long before a quality silicone bag will.
Yeah, though our hard drive backup will fairly quickly become trash, I think.
Probably, but it’s the good ol’ cost-benefit analysis. It’ll survive so much longer than if it wasn’t protected at at all, but the next-level fire protection that would increases its chances is really expensive.
What if you were to put a bunch of silica packets or beads in the safe? Or put an air tight container inside the safe
You’d need a ton of silica gel, pounds of it, to capture steam as fast as it is generated. Your best bet would be a water tight, temperature resistant container like silicone bags for documents. I’d recommend a properly fireproof safe (read: $$$) or planning for potential losses for anything larger.
My mom bought me a fireproof safe because she was giving me some jewelry to hold for my kids, and she also had some documents for me to keep.
It sat on the floor under a bed for years. Then I decided to get appraisals of the jewelry to add it to my homeowners insurance.
When I opened the safe, everything in it was moist and moldy.
Nothing important was lost or damaged, but it was nasty as hell.
At least it was safe
Everyone should have a cheap fire safe. For the documents that are super difficult to replace, if nothing else.
What documents are difficult to replace?
Birth cert, immunization records, high school and college diplomas. Name change docs. The list is endless.
For example because my birth state is anti-trans I would have to fight just to receive a copy of my birth certificate. They would make me come to that state in person and still may have ro wait weeks.
Birth cert, immunization records, high school and college diplomas. Name change docs. The list is endless.
The list reads like it only applies to backwards/undeveloped countries. Birth certificates aren’t a thing here, immunization records are in my digital patient file, I must have a paper diploma somewhere, although I have no idea where it is and I never had a need for it. The last time I had to prove I have a BSc. I just downloaded the signed PDF from the education service website. Any name changes would just be recorded in the government’s basic administration. Even things like the deed to my house is registered with the government and no one would ever ask me for the physical piece of paper, even when selling it.
Where is “here” in your case?
The Netherlands
Ah, thanks. Sounds a lot more civilized than where I live.
I just moved into a place with a (gun?) safe I don’t know how to open. So technically I have one.
Is it an old fashioned one with a number wheel? Try 0-25-0 or 25-50-25. I learned that one from Richard Feynman.
Care to explain?
Long story, but TL;DR: These are the factory settings for most older combination locks.
Feynman in one of his books explained that he picked locks as a hobby during and after WW2. So he knew how to pick locks, but his method for combination locks was not practical, basically a guessing game. At some point, a safe (I think installed on special orders by some overseer of the Manhattan project) was locked and no one knew the combination. So someone sent for a locksmith to open it. Feynman was hoping to find this locksmith, so he could ask him how to open such a safe. But, when he came to the room with the safe, the safe was open and the locksmith gone.
So he did what any sane person would do; he found out the name of the locksmith, started following him around for a bit and ultimately bought him a drink in a bar. When he introduced himself the locksmith recognized his name, Feynman being notorious for his shenigans including lockpicking. So he asks the locksmith how to open this kind of safe, and the locksmith responds “no idea”. So Feynman asks if he had no idea, why did he take the job and how did he open it. Then the locksmith explains that he was just going to show up, make some noise and all that, and then explain that he couldn’t crack the safe, here’s my bill thank you very much. But since he knew that these safes were all deliverd from the factory with either the standard combinations 0-25-0 or 25-50-25, he tried those first and that’s how he opened the safe.
Feynman found it baffling that someone had a big heavy safe custom installed for him, but was then too lazy to change the combination. He also went around the labs (where a lot of files realting to the Manhattan project were kept), and found out that quite a few combination locks on the file cabinets were still set to default.
Nope, digital, and it beeps a lot if you mess with it.
Maybe search the lock picking lawyer’s channel on youtube for the make and model.
I have a home safe that doesn’t lock properly. To replace it would cost me everything that I’d put in a home safe.
Most of my legal documents can be reproduced easily or they are in a folder I can take with me. Apart from that I don’t own anything of value.
We have a fireproof / waterproof safe box we store documents like that in (essentially this). It’s not going to keep an intruder from getting the documents if they wanted to (they could just take the box with them and smash it open, it’s certainly not good as an anti-theft device) but it’s waterproof and fireproof and that’s more what we were concerned with.
It’s worth noting that these aren’t rated to protect documents from a prolonged intense fire; if your house burns to the ground, it’s probably not going to help.
if your house burns to the ground
There’s a fire station like… idk… less than 10 minute drive away (probably like 5 minute drive I think), I hope that’s quick enough
then again, what are the odds of actually having a fire? 👀
as someone who lives 5 minutes from a fire station and had a house fire. 5 minutes is a loooong time to have a house fire.
put a hotdog in the flame of a campfire for 5 minutes. then add another 3 minutes for actions taken after they arrive on scene.
is your hotdog edible?
That was our feeling, too - if we did lose everything, we have digital backups of those documents. The chances are obviously low of having a fire, but that’s not really the point… the intent is to plan for the “what if” scenario. If you want 100% fire safety, you store things off-site, but this was an acceptable level of risk for the cost, for us. You mention floods; these boxes are rated for much longer in water, so they might be applicable to your use-case.
Well, I do I have tucked into a random bookshelf one of those “World Atlas” book safes that everyone already knows is a storage box and not a book, because they’ve been sold virtually unchanged as far as I can tell since at least the early 1990s. As a little treat to anyone observant who notices this and thinks they’re so damn clever, inside I have nothing but a scaled down 3D printed replica of a cinder block.
It is astoundingly unlikely anyone will find where my valuables are actually hidden in my house, nor am I going to admit it on the internet.
I always wanted a hollowed out book as a child. So I took a steak knife and a random book I figured was big enough, and started painstakingly carving out the center. I still have it somewhere, it’s kinda cool, but now I really would rather have a bookshelf hidden door, or maybe behind a painting, hiding a secret lair.
I’m picturing you having a huge wall of books. One of the books has money in it, but you’re forced to search each one everytime you want the money because you keep forgetting which book it is
But it always happens to be the book a new guest wants to check out…
For guns, I picked up a decent one from a government surplus auction. The keypad had a couple numbers that didn’t work and someone cut out the battery holder. But 10 bucks fixed both of those. So I got a $500 safe for about $45.
Less about burglars or fires and more about curious young hands.
I live alone but I have a gun safe because in my state if I get robbed and can’t demonstrate that I did my due dilligence to protect the guns from theives I could end up getting arrested
I’m not a very legal person, but I can’t think of any documents that I can’t just request a copy.
If my apartment were to burn down I would have bigger problems to worry about, like homelessness and losing all my tech that took me years to aquire.
Sure. But it might be easier if you had a birth certificate or your insurance documents at the bank. It’s just one less hassle to prove who you are to have someone make you a new copy.
Arguably this is less of an issue with digital documents.
