Evil Week: Keep Your Snacks Out of Your Family's Filthy Paws

Welcome to Evil Week, our annual dive into all the slightly sketchy hacks we’d usually refrain from recommending. Want to weasel your way into free drinks, play elaborate mind games, or, er, launder some money? We’ve got all the info you need to be successfully unsavory.

Halloween gives everyone the excuse to demolish some candy. Adults without kids, like myself, feel encouraged to celebrate with a bag of their favorite candy. Turns out, the other people in your household like it as well, and for some reason they’re bold enough to eat it, or ask for it. This brings a greater, year-long problem to light: how everyone in your house creeps on your personal snacks. Enough! In the name of keeping your hard-earned, comforting, sanity-giving snacks safe, you must deceive your household.

Keep your enemies close

Whether it’s your significant other, young children, teenagers, or roommates, the folks in your house always want what you have. You can even buy them their own snacks, and without fail, their wandering eyes will fall upon your precious goodies. The most effective way to trick them into leaving your snacks alone lies in first being a good observer.

Know their palate

Everyone has flavor preferences: ingredients and spices they love and abhor. If you’re really lucky, they’ll have dietary restrictions or allergies. Capitalize on this knowledge. Either buy the snacks that actually have ingredients or flavors they don’t like or can’t eat, or lie about it. If your nephew has a nut allergy and asks what you’re eating, just woefully tell him it contains nuts, or was made in a factory that processes nuts. Sorry, kiddo.

Folks that are spicy-food avoiders are easy to trick, too. My boyfriend hates spicy food and dairy, so any savory food I don’t want to share is “really spicy, wow.” Sweet treats are definitely packed with cream. Heavy cream. The heaviest. Keep your ears open for any time your family or roommates talk about foods they don’t like, or flavors that gross them out. Then, use this knowledge to help yourself.

Hide and sneak

Sometimes your snacks will get snatched before you even get a chance to lie about them. You’ll need to hide your snacks.

Once you’ve lived with someone for a while—let’s say more than six months—you’ll begin to see their patterns in the house. Where they go a lot, sometimes, and never. It doesn’t have to be an entire room that they avoid; it can be a small drawer, maybe an obscure cabinet, or box. This is where you hide your snacks. Maybe your significant other doesn’t like to squat down. You should store your snacks in the back of the low cabinets in your home. You might see that your kids never go into the pots and pans drawers, or your brother never opens the liquor cabinet. Stash your snacks there. And please, never get your snacks from this secret place when others are in the room.

Play dress up

Maybe you’re in a small space, or your household is especially devoid of hiding spots and you can’t find a good hidden snack zone. It’s time to put your snacks in costume. Hide your snacks inside of alternative packaging. Put the Doritos inside the bag of the cauliflower chips your kids hate. You can basically eat those in plain sight because they won’t mess with those gross chips. The only lady in the house? Keep your peanut butter M&Ms in a box of tampons. Tuck the dark chocolate peanut butter cups into an emptied edamame bag in the freezer.

If you can, use multiple techniques all at once. That way if you get caught, you can laugh it off like it was a one-time thing and rely on your other secrets. When enough time has passed, definitely go ahead and use all of your methods in tandem again.

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