Working from home means, well, spending a helluva a lot of time at home. Because my partner also does a fair amount of work from home, it means we’ve been able to spend way more time together, which has really brought us closer together. On the downside, the environment itself gets pretty boring when you’re in it for most of the time.
To be honest, it’s less of a problem and more of an excuse to get creative with how I spend my free time. There are only so many hours you can play video games and watch Netflix, after all. To shake things up a little, I decided to see how many instax prints of myself I could hide around the house before my partner finds them. Not weird at all. Completely normal, actually.
I used a Fujifilm instax SQ1 to take some excellent selfies, all of which print right out instantly. Perfect for on the fly hiding around the home, let me tell you. It also has a handy little mirror on the front to help position each shot, helping me nail that selfie. Every. Damn. Time.
To maximise the experience, I increased the risk with every photo.
Let us begin.
Bookmark
Besides being a great subtle hiding spot, using an instax pic as a bookmark is also very resourceful, you know? Here’s me peeking out of one of the books on our shelf.
My partner’s not at all a Matthew Reilly fan so this one’s still sitting there, undiscovered.
Plant
Slightly riskier, but I decided to put the second instax print in a pot plant. She loves caring for these plants and waters them often, so there was a chance of being sprung if I didn’t hide it well.
I think you’ll agree I did a stellar job.
The next time my partner watered the plant she was so enamoured with its new growth she completely overlooked the instax. Another win for me and my obnoxiously weird investigation.
Bottle
Back to the kitchen for the third picture, specifically, the liquor shelf. Can you see?
How about now?
Perfection. This wasn’t the one she found and in hindsight, it was stupid of me to consider it somewhere she’d look — she’s pregnant and very much not drinking. I had to get riskier.
The fridge
On the topic of clever uses for instax photos, I’ve just run out of post-it notes, so I’ve used this angry face to mark my things instead. I only have beers.
Like the booze on the shelf, she has little reason to look at beers in the fridge, so I’d say the bottom shelf here is safe territory. Time to kick it up a notch again.
Bathroom
Kicking things up a notch, I decided to hide an instax among some of the beauty products she uses on a daily basis.
Very cheeky, but even that one lasted a few days before being found. To be fair, I notice nothing when I’m half asleep in front of the bathroom mirror in the morning so I probably would have missed it as well. Time to get obvious.
Wardrobe
I didn’t even try to hide this one.
Funnily enough, it lasted a day or so but it was the first one she found. Understandably, she questioned what the hell I was doing to which I simply replied, “work”.
So there you have it, the answer is five. I can hide five instax prints of myself around the house without my partner noticing for at least one day. If you’d like to see some more of my creative photography, please see the instructional piece on how to recreate pictures of any great monument from the safety of your backyard below with the instax mini LiPlay.
Enjoy.
