Fireproof Boxes — An Often Overlooked Detail
A fireproof box can be a great place to store a small quantity of important papers. Anything put in this box has a better chance of surviving a fire. I like to keep my passports, birth certificates, wills, and social security cards in there, among other things. They are the things you don’t need all that often, but when you do need them, they can be almost impossible to replace.
There’s just one problem with my fireproof box; I don’t know what happened to the key. My five year old son liked to play with it, opening and closing it, and one day the key just disappeared. Now I’m sure that the key will turn up the next time I clean up my office — and thankfully there weren’t any important papers in it when he lost the key (I took them out before he decided to “decorate” my passport!) — but that does raise an important issue.
We buy those fireproof boxes so that our important papers will survive a fire. But what about the key? What good would it do if the box survived intact but you couldn’t put your hands on the key to unlock it?
I recommend that you keep one key with you (perhaps on your car key ring, since you’d probably grab that on the way out the door if there was a fire) and give the second key to somebody you trust (we call this “off site storage” in the security business). That way, should there be a fire (Heaven forbid!), there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to quickly open the box once it’s recovered.
I’ll be covering more fire tips in the days and weeks to come, so keep checking back.
Thanks,
Tom