I had a Toyota Tercel a million years ago. I took off a hubcap and taped a key to the inside. It saved me once when I locked my keys in the car.
One key is hidden on a neighbor’s mantle. Another key is hidden on a hook inside another neighbor’s front door. We have their keys hidden in a cabinet drawer.
We have electronic deadbolts on the residence, so no traditional key is needed. We do keep a mechanical key to the deadbolts in the car, so if somehow both deadbolts malfunctioned at once we could still get in. Assuming we have our car keys with us.
So we don’t have 100% scenario coverage, but we’re well up in the five 9s reliability. Which should be good enough. I should be so lucky as to live another five 9s worth of days.
I would be hesitant to keep a spare key in my car unless it’s well hidden. Cars can be broken into fairly easily and most of us probably have our address somewhere in the car.
Our trusted next-door neighbor has a spare key.
Good point. But living as I do in a condo, there is nowhere outside my unit that’s under my control except inside my car.
Nope, but our neighbor has a key and an alarm fob.
There are a surprising number of people where I live (Brooklyn, NY) who have these things:
They’ll lock it to a fence or a street sign or something a few blocks from their apartment, and keep a spare in it. There’s no way to connect it to the owner. But if you live alone, and don’t have a doorman, and don’t know your neighbors all that well (which is pretty commonplace in New York), this is a solution.
I use one of those for my hidden house key. I lock it to a utility pipe in an unlikely place by my structure. I started using one when my son locked himself out of my house when he was 15 and I was out of town for a few days; he was staying with his mother but needed something from my house, tried breaking in which set off the alarm and silliness ensued. I’ve never needed it but it’s nice it’s there.
I’m also president of our condo association. Occasionally staff will find something like that locked to something on our grounds. Those are promptly cut off and thrown away.
Nope.
My sister has a spare set of my apartment keys, and so does my neighbor across the street.
Yep. One is hidden outside and a friend has not only keys but the spare garage door opener.
Fortunately my condo association has no jurisdiction outside of the building.
I’m talking about people putting these key safes somewhere in the public street.
Anyway, it’s a solution for some. Wouldn’t work where you live, I guess.
I used to until a few months ago. TLDR: My ex continues to lurk, and doing so is unwise.
Long story short, I broke up with They Who Must Be Unnamed (TWMBU) in 2017. It was…not great. Roughly 9 mos later I bought a new cell phone. All messages were downloaded from the cloud before the block was re-applied to the line. Thus I got to see that TWMBU continued to text me weekly, and at times made very concerning statements (“I saw your grass was getting long. I thought about going into the shed and mowing it for you before you came home in secret”). Locks were changed.
Periodically, I would come home and be CERTAIN that TWMBU had been there. Nothing was missing. Things were just moved. Small things. Couch throw pillows were swapped. A glass would be in the sink. Once, everything from my back porch was taken and lined up in neat lines on my neighbor’s driveway. This would happen in bursts, then stop for awhile. I thought I was paranoid or going crazy. Especially since it happened when the door was locked. During this time, I had a well-hidden key in an old camping teapot at the back of the porch, just in case the kids forgot their house keys coming home from school.
This continued for a long while.
Eventually, I decided to start dating again. I met a reasonable woman. Not likely to be the love of my life, but hey, a few nice dates with someone reasonable would be good. Date 1 went well (PG rated). Boostered by this, I arranged Date 2. She wished to go to a local pagan/alternative craft fair. Sounds great!
The fair was February 2020. We hung around for a bit, saw some things. We went to leave. Suddenly, TWMBU appeared. TWMBU threatened to cause a scene. TWMBU has a history of screaming things like, “You are HURTING me! Stop!” or other similar things that attract a LOT of attention when they do not get their way or are ignored, as a deliberate strategy. TWMBU button-holed me. The reasonable lady went home with some friends.
TWMBU confessed they had driven by my house every single day for the past 2.5 years. TWMBU also confessed they knew I had bought a new car (which was not on the internet and would only be known if you had been to my home in the past few weeks). TWMBU also confessed they knew where I was going because they had seen on facebook I had replied interested to the event. TWMBU also wanted me to know they were getting married and definitely going to have a baby. Definitely. I backed away slowly.
For a few months, everything seemed reasonably OK. Then I started having the same issue with coming home to find objects moved. At first I thought I was paranoid. Then my alarm went off at night and the camera got a shot of what was clearly TWMBU’s leg and shoe leaving the frame.
I no longer have a key hidden for my house.
Your house was built in 1791? I’d love to hear the story.
[SNIP]
I think I speak for everyone when I say “Holy shit!” Sleep with one eye open LordHarry.
My key is hidden in a place that seems to be a favorite hangout for black widow spiders. So I have that going for me.
We enter and exit via the garage using the opener or the keypad. I think we have a key to the front door… somewhere… If we ever have a power outage while away from home, we might have to break a window to get in. So far, that hasn’t happened in the time we’ve lived here.
I voted no, as we don’t have a key hidden in the house or on the property. I do have a set of keys for house and car that a couple of friends keep for me, and I have a key to their house. We feed each other’s pets on occasion, so it makes sense for us to swap keys.
It’s an old New England house in a rural area. Houses this old and older aren’t extremely rare around here. People often don’t lock up around here. There were no locks on the very old doors when we moved in but the insurance company made us put them on. We never have used them.