I put it through a laminator and cut it into a business card size. I then go up into the attic and press it down into the uninsulated interior wall between my office and son’s room. The size of the laminate should allow me to flex it slightly and pin it between the walls with tension. If they try to remove the wall it will fall into the crawlspace below the house and be caught by a pad of insulation.

Alternatively, tuck it into the barrel of the washing machine in said laminate. It won’t rattle and without fully disassembling it you won’t be able to retrieve it.

Straighten it and use a needle to push it into a tube of toothpaste.

Hide it in the insulation, then hide a bunch of dummy paperclips all through the house.

I put the paperclip in with other paperclips at my office supply warehouse. Do I live in an office supply warehouse? Yes. The investigators will have to rifle though millions of loose paperclips and thousands of boxed paperclips. They have to search my shipping and my receiving areas. As I’m leaving, a woman sees me. She says “can you sell me some office supplies?” . She’s the lead investigators. I say no. We make love all night. In the morning the cops come and I escape in one of their uniforms. I tell her to meet me in Mexico but I go to Canada. I don’t trust her. Besides, I love the cold. Thirty years later I get a postcard. I have a son. And he’s the Chief of Police. This is where the story gets interesting: I tell her to meet me in Paris by the Trocadero. She’s been waiting for me all these years. She’s never taken another lover. I don’t care. I don’t show up. I go to Berlin. That’s where I shipped the paperclip.

Jokes on them, I keep a bunch of old screws, nails, etc. They come in handy. I’d disturb those containers and mix in part the box of paperclips I already have. Then dump the others around the house randomly.

Then, tilt my fridge and hide the correct one under it, in the little lip formed by where the metal is rolled.

Unless they actually lift the fridge and turn it almost upside down, that damn thing isn’t coming out of that lip.

By the time they’ve gone through all of the fake hiding spots and determined that all of the other clips are the wrong ones, a big portion of the time is gone (and I’m assuming the clip somehow identifiable and that they have a way of doing so, otherwise they’re screwed from the beginning)

Nobody with sense is going to turn the fridge over to check under it unless they’ve exhausted other places.

It’s all about wasting their time and making use of human habits, not necessarily a super secret spot.

But, that spot rules out metal detectors, and won’t have visible signs of recent movement (because I keep the kitchen absurdly clean, there’s no built up dust or grime under it to show the movement). If I hadn’t had to turn the fridge on its side to get under they’re for some repairs, I wouldn’t know the lip existed in the first place. So the chances of any of the investigators and/or subcontractors also knowing that a decades old model of refrigerator happens to have a rolled metal lip is pretty damn low.

They’d do the human thing of looking under it, or even lifting it off the feet and checking under those, but not look further because any of the other places under there would allow a little piece of metal to fall out freely when their first search happened.

But, there’s a similar spot on the interior of our washing machine that I found when replacing a switch. Same kind of deal, but the area where the washer is isn’t as clean, so it would be obvious enough.

Any family members and all pets will also be removed from the premises, and they aren’t allowed to have the paperclip.

Get someone who isn’t a family member to shove it up their ass and stay in the house

If I were the investigator, I’d set the contractors loose on the house and then spend my time interrogating the competitor.

So as the competitor, I would hide it wherever. But then I would sit with noise cancelling headphones and eyes shut so as to not give the hiding place away. I would give it away with a glance or a face twitch much faster than they could search.

I have several boxes of paperclips at home, spread them out and as decoys, and put the real paper clip inside a mechanical pencil after straightening it out and put the pencil into a box of many different pencils, make a tiny mark with a file and mix it up.

The paperclip boxes will distract them for a few hours, but logic will dictate that mixing the paper clip with other’s is dumb as I need to be able to retrieve it with in a resonable timeframe.

Straighten it out, then twist it into a spring around a screwdriver. Remove a spring from some component and put the original in my spare parts box.

Swallow it.

Pop up some of the quarter round behind one of the toilets and drop the paperclip between the flooring and the studs then a quick tap down of the quarter round. With the extra time I might quickly paint a few spots in other rooms to distract them.

Same answer as before. Bend it straight and put it in either a mechanical pencil or the ink tube of a pen.

I have a loophole–or more accurately, an ash vent in my fireplace. It leads to a spot in my basement that is completely inaccessible without compromising the structural integrity of my home (it’s a block wall that holds up the fireplace and some key joists).

When I need to return the paperclip, I’d take a sledgehammer to the block wall and get it that way (I’d probably attach it to something easy to find before dropping it). The $5Mil will more than cover repairs, even if my house collapses.

If that isn’t legal, I’d just go down to my basement and tuck it between a floor joist and the floor above, plus hide a bunch of decoys in my basement to hide tracks. They would only find it by pulling up every layer of floor in the entire house, which would take much longer than 12 hours.

Straighten the paperclip and hide it:

Inside a ballpoint pen. In a spool of wire. Shove it into a side of a cardboard box. Drop it down a drain. Taped to the backside of a shelf. Inside the foam of my headphones. inside an extension cord - make sure to not use it afterwards.