You have 5 minutes to hide a paperclip in your home. A detective has 24 hours to find it, If they don't, you get $100,000. Where are you going to hide the paperclip?
Step 1: Unplug a network cable from my switch in the basement.
Step 2: Run up to the loft and open the chimney access hatch.
Step 3: Figure out which cable i unplugged, and pull it up 3-4 meters.
Step 4: Straighten out the paperclip and stick it inside the insulation of the cable.
Step 5: Drop the cable back down into the chimney and reconnect it.
Yes, I use my otherwise unused chimneys for cable runs.
I’m just giving it to the detective and losing the money. The detective would do more than $100k damage to my house looking. Checking behind the drywall, under the carpet, tearing open my mattresses, opening my appliances, etc.
Cheaper to save the repair bill.
Now if they pay to fix everything, I use a hammer to open holes in every wall as a misdirection and hide it in the flooring or framing.
I would buy a few thousand dollars worth of paperclips and hide them all over the house. The detective will have to waste time verifying which paperclip is the right one while i laugh and laugh
Step 1. Mask the item. Change its size, shape, outline, or appearance. In this case, straighten out to be just a bit of wire.
Step 2. Fight gravity. Items fall down normally, so hide it somewhere against gravity. Anywhere you couldn't normally reach is a good start.
Step 3. Reach around. Hide the item in a location you can reach, but cannot see. In this case, the air return would be a good place I could reach into and hide a small piece of wire by wedging into the drywall.
Step 4. Distract. Take the other boxes of paper clips and scatter them throughout the house. Welcome to the haystack.
Step 5. Admit nothing. If they ever claim to have the paper clip, do not check the correct location until the time period has elapsed.
My house was built in the early 1900s and was used to secretly store and distribute liquor to the town and surrounding areas during prohibition... that money is as good as mine.
Straighten it and snip it into 4 brad nails. Tap them into your molding at random places in the house. Preferably places with unpainted brads in it, such as stained wood molding.
The detective... Is he like a Clouseau or a Columbo type? If the former, I could leave it in plain sight and still get the $100k but if it's the latter, I might as well confess the moment he walks in the door because there's nowhere I could hide it he wouldn't sniff it out and make me incredibly uncomfortable as he toys with me for hours before going in for the kill.
Or I could just toss it into a drawer with a million other paperclips and he'd never know which one is the one he's looking for.
Remove an outlet cover, slide the paperclip through one of the wire openings so it drops into the wall, replace cover and figure out what to do with the next 4 minutes.
Turn off breaker (without clock attached), unscrew a wall plate for an outlet, unbend and drop paperclip in wall, below outlet, by sliding it between the electric box and the drywall, put wall plate back, turn breaker back on, put the kettle on for a tea.
My magical "You'll never find what you're looking for" box of cables. The moment I've unpacked and plugged in my newly ordered one, the one I knew I had spawns back in and I'll inevitably find it and curse.
Assuming this is like a neon green and magenta paperclip with a perfectly unique appearance.
My first thought is to bend it straight and stick it down the barrel of a Papermate Sharpwriter, then put said pencil in my pen cup or something.
My next thought is to put it in one of several dozen bottles of chemicals I have around the house. Laundry detergent, fabric softener, floor polish, 3-in-1 oil, car wax, chlorox, soft scrub, etc. But if you've got 24 hours to find it you might just think to empty out all the opaque bottles.
My third thought is to climb up on my roof and wedge it under a shingle.
If that one isn't accepted, I'd see if I could get it to fit in a cat turd in Izzy's litterbox.
Assuming they aren't allowed to destroy your property to look for the paperclip, I've got a small hole above the shower in the apartment I'm in where I could probably get away with shoving it into.
You get paid if they don't find it. You don't have to produce it yourself. Melt the paper clip down mix it with other metals. Use a sander to completely destroy it. Vaporize it. Etc
Drop it in the ranch bottle. There's no way he'd look there and even if he did, it wouldn't be easy to see. Similar ideas would be a shampoo bottle or taped inside a drawer slide so a metal detector wouldn't work
It's April now.... I'd take a small piece of wood from garage, drill small hole, straighten paperclip and place inside, seal with wood putty, draw crude image of a holiday present on wood with Sharpie, poorly write "merry x-mas mommy, 1986, 2nd grade" on it, rub "ornament" on floor a bit to age, drill hole near top edge, place ornament hook and twist and reshape to mock years of use, bury it in the Christmas ornament box up in the rafters of the garage.
Since others have taken the in-their-ass approach already: inside my microphone. The end unscrews, which isn't really obvious unless you fuck with it. I used to hide my prescriptions in there to get them past room checks at my old boarding school.
Straighten it, cut it into as many tiny pieces as possible with wire cutters for 4 minutes, then spend the last minute spreading them around random places in the carpet, vents, lawn, etc.
Depends wether I need to find it later myself. If yes then I'd probably remove a baseboard and put it behind it next to the nail so you can't even use a metal detector. If I don't need to find it then I'd drop it down the crack under my bathroom doorstep which leads to the subfloor space where you're never going to find it again.
I'll hide a bunch of them at different places along with the target. So that they lose confidence or keep looking for similar places every time they find the wrong ones.
3d print a flower pot with a pause in the job. Drop the clip in a cavity in the vase with some glue so it doesn't rattle around, resume the print job to finish and seal it inside, put some plants in there.
Buy 10,000 paperclips and scatter them throughout the house. Hide the target one somewhere obscure. It'll take more than 24 hours for him to find the exact right one.
I don't know how plumbing works, but I think this would work:
I'd empty the hair from my hairbrush, tangle the paperclip in it and put the clump down my shower drain. Hair clump keeps it from draining away keeping it "in my house." Retrieve after with one of those spikey stick snake things. Spend the remaining 3 minutes touching other hiding places to throw the detective off the scent.
If that doesn't count as in the house I'd probably just slip it into a pocket of a coat in my closet. I doubt they'd think to check every pocket of every item of clothing. They're probably checking all the vents and window panels and little holes in my walls, and I don't think they'd catch me because I go in my closet a lot so it's not like I've disturbed dust to go in there during the 5 minutes.
I have a bag in a drawer with about 100+ pens of all kinds that I collected over the years. I'd straighten it out and stick it in one of those. Good luck, detective!