Do you take any security or theft precautions when having large parties in your home where you might not know everyone? Do you close off certain bathrooms or clear out the medicine cabinets?
If you have really nice art objects that could be pocketed do you show them off or hide them away?
What do you do if anything?
I don’t usually have people I don’t know well come to my home, so the only thing I ‘relocate’ for a party are prescription drugs. I make the rounds of bedside table, kitchen cabinet, and bath cabinet and gather everything up. I put it all in an opaque bag and put the bag in a secure place in my garage. It isn’t so much that I’m worried about theivery as the off chance that someone might say “oh, I have such a headache, maybe one of these might help” and it would turn out to be a medication they couldn’t tolerate. If anything is going to send my guests to the hospital, I’d prefer it be my cooking.
I tend to move my wallet and keys to a more secure location. I don’t have anything else that I worry any of my guests might touch.
We don’t have any prescription drugs. If there a little kids coming over we move the glass art to a higher level. No theft precautions.
Many years ago I read something somewhere that said the worst place to keep meds is in your bathroom. They need to be kept cool and dry and your bathroom is warm and humid. Made sense, so I moved them to my hall linen closet. That has the unintended perk of me not caring if someone wants to go rooting around in my bathroom and find toothpaste and cotton swabs and other normal bathroom stuff.
This also means that when people are over, since I have a one story house, it’s pretty easy to tell if someone is snooping. The linen closet has a door that’s half the size of a normal door so it’s not even like you can mistake it for a bathroom or bedroom.
Having said that, if/when I have people over that I don’t know or just too many people to keep track of, anything that people might want to take gets moved to a more secure location. I should probably move everything, I mean, I’d still rather my omeprozole or Imitrex or odenstron didn’t get stolen because someone decided to just grab it now while the coast is clear and figure out what it is later, but in general I just move the things I know people might want.
If I was going to have people in my house when I wasn’t there, say showing my house to sell it or running an errand while an HVAC or plumber was there, everything would be locked up in a safe. No reason to even have them looking at the bottles.
I hide my face-drying towel when I have a party because I don’t want people’s stupid hands all over my nice fresh face-drying towel.
Drugs aren’t in the bathroom. Well, the OTC ones are. I have a yearly kids party and I guess I should probably move them out of the kid-height-drawer and up into the cabinet. But…eh, people watch their kids.
Ever since a pill-crazy friend (probably) took several vicodin out of medicine cabinet several years back, I haven’t kept any pain-killers stronger than aspirin in open view. They’re squirreled away out of sight for the rare occasions I need them.
Otherwise I don’t care - the other prescription meds I have are thoroughly boring.
I don’t have a lot of valuables other than a few pieces of expensive jewelry. My wedding ring was stolen a few months ago when my niece was dog-sitting during our vacation, so I’ve subsequently bought a safe. I’d definitely move my jewelry to the safe if I was hosting a large party with strangers, or having contractors in the house.
I don’t have any medication that anyone would care about, so no worries about that.
Another thing I’d is to lock my study because I have a credenza with my tax files, social security cards, passports, etc. Don’t want someone else stealing my identity. We’ve already been through that after the Anthem security breach and it’s no fun.
One of the advantages of being a curmudgeon is not having strangers rooting around in my house unnoticed.
When I do have folks over, about 10 max, they’re folks I know. And the idea of moving or hiding anything would never occur to me. Furniture might get rearranged to facilitate a buffet setup or whatever, but that’s about it.
Back years ago, my first husband was a Hell’s Angel. We had a sick dog with coccidiosis that we were dosing. Some of they guys came over. The dog’s pills that were on the kitchen windowsill were gone the next morning.
Also, some of my panties.
I learned not to go to bed and leave them roaming around. Typically they partied in the workshop outdoors, but some of them must have come in.
And the sister of my 2nd husband married a slime ball who later broke her leg in 2 places. I caught him with my purse in his hands, and there was no reason for him to have it.
So yeah, I put stuff away.
Only to a limited extent here.
My wife keeps her nicest jewelry in a lockbox disguised as a dictionary for everyday purposes anyway. So that has us covered everday even when we’re out of the house. Anything we would display as an art item, our good silverware, etc. we’ll leave in the normal places in the house.
As for medications, we put away the few things that someone might be addicted to - vicodin and the like. I’m not particularly worried about it, but I figure I’m probably doing everyone a favor by removing temptation. Addictions are not the kind of thing people advertise, so it’s not just strangers who might have problems.
Other than that, I close doors and turn off lights in rooms I don’t want people in. Any room you’re supposed to go in will have the door open and lights on. So far, this seems to have been well understood without anyone saying it explicitly.
No, I don’t lock anything away. I don’t generally invite people over unless I know them, and most of my friends are pretty tame.
I have counted the silver after a large party, but so far, nothing has gone missing.
Why would you ever have anyone at a party in your home whom you might not know?
We did once. A big get together after an event in town, and lots of people we knew brought people they knew, but we didn’t. Nothing bad happened, except they stayed longer than we would have liked.
Single friends might bring a new partner, if you have kids they’re always bringing new friends around, your sibling might be hosting their in-laws from out of town on the same day you’re throwing your spouse’s birthday party, so of course they bring them along rather than abandon their guests… lots of reasons you might find yourself hosting a new person at a party.
We’ve never moved or hidden anything when hosting here. Now that I think about it, it’s not the worse idea in the world, especially for prescription drugs. Nothing’s ever come up missing so far, though.
When I’m a guest I won’t open the medicine cabinet. A bunch of ping-pong balls might fall out.
I’ve had parties where people have brought girlfriend or husbands (etc) that I didn’t know, but it’s not just that. You really don’t know if your co-worker likes to pop a few Vicodins and drink a beer on the weekend. If you have a bottle in the medicine cabinet, he might grab 3 or 4 of them. Contrary to what some people seem to think, not everyone that does drugs looks like a meth head with their teeth falling out of their face and constantly begging their landlord for just a few more days to come up with the rent.
As much as I hate to embarrass the casual snooper, I always liked the idea of filling the medicine cabinet with marbles. I’ve heard of people doing that, but I’ve never been quite sure how to do it.
Never even occurred to me. Probably should have. My husband does have some pain medications, but even more potentially troublesome, I have lots of syringes and needles for work (hundreds of insulin syringes, and several larger ones, and big needles to match for IM injections that could access IV, and a few IV start kits with catheters). They’re in a closed cabinet in an unpredictable and public room, but not particularly difficult to find nor locked.
I will fix that today. Thanks for this thread!
Ever since I saw this wanna get away? - YouTube I’ve never opened a medicine cabinet again; not even my own.
I generally have a gun within reach, even at home. On the rare occasion we’re expecting guests with children, I make sure they’re locked in the safe. We have a basket on the kitchen counter that tends to pile up with mail, and I make sure no financial or medical documents are laying around for the casual reader. Prescription meds are upstairs, so guests won’t generally come in contact with those. Anything else of real value (silver, collectibles, jewelry) stays locked in the safe, so those aren’t available for sticky fingers anyway.
I’m not really a “social” person, so guests are rare enough that I actually have to prep for them.