Over on the Breaking Bad finale thread, I stated that I found it strange that a character would leave their door to the outside unlocked after they came home. Someone else disputed this, saying something like “not all of us live in NYC and we don’t bother locking our front doors when we come in”. I responded that I do not live in NYC and in fact do not even live within 50 miles of an interstate in any direction (which also set me to wondering what percentage of the US population can make that claim); yet I always lock my door the moment I close it after stepping inside. I got a response from someone (not sure if it was my original antagonist) saying that they had lived a lot of different places and “never ever ever” did this.
I thought my practice was pretty much the norm; but now I am wondering. Do you lock your door when you come home? (Saying whether you live in an apartment or house, the city, suburbs, or a rural area would add context.)
Relatedly, when I had a car I also always locked it at all times except for the few seconds required to get in or out.
Live in a house in a suburban neighborhood of a medium sized city.
If the door is shut, and no one is out in the yard, then the door is locked. That being said, if the weather is nice the back doors are often open, sometimes all night long. The front door is generally locked unless someone is out front.
Lived my first 54 years in the San Diego coastal strip. Lifelong habit of locking outside doors unless I’m going in and out a lot (yardwork, eg).
The past eight years we’ve been in a rather isolated small town (pop 23k) with a very low crime rate. Although it’s quite unnecessary, I can’t break the old habit of compulsive locking.
In the UK, front doors lock automatically on closing so it’s not even up for debate.
The back door often isn’t locked when I’m home as the dog is in and out. The back garden is surrounded by a high fence though, and boxed in by neighbouring properties, so burglars would need to mean business.
I’ve lived in a relatively safe neighborhood for 17 years in a Los Angeles “South Bay” beach city. (I rented for 15 years, then two years ago bought a house two blocks away from that apartment; I really like the neighborhood). I’ve forgotten to lock the door(s) several dozen times.
With the house, I still reflexively lock my front door when I come in, but (when I’m at home) the side door is usually unlocked and frequently open, and the rear door is occasionally open; those doors have screen doors as well, and I’m more worried about bugs and varmints (skunks, raccoons) than evil doers.
Down by the beach we get some homeless people and occasional drunk people wandering back from the marina, but no crime waves to speak of. (Being three blocks from the police station, with four churches and an old-folks home within a couple of blocks radius probably helps). My “noise pollution” is people talking with each other as they walk down to or up from the beach, some feral parrots, an occasional ambulance from the old folks’ home and, on quiet nights, some sea lions that hang around inside the breakwater, about half a mile away. On Saturday and Sunday, there was a sort of Fedora-looking hat that ended up sitting on the little brick border of my front yard-ette, but it didn’t seem very threatening, and now it’s gone on its way.
I live in a village of 2,000 people. I tend to keep the front door locked at all times, but the back doors are not always locked. In fact, if I’m popping to the village store, I’ll leave the back doors wide open.
Interesting so far, thanks! My town is about 17,000 and could I suppose also be fairly described as “isolated” (I checked, and it is actually about *65 *miles, “as the crow flies”, to the nearest interstate, though that is the dead-end of a kind of trunk/feeder highway; the nearest of the main arterial interstates with a number divisible by 5 is 75 miles away at its closest point). But we have shootings on the news a few times a year, and our share of burglaries.
It’s just a way of illustrating that I’m not in or near a big or even medium-sized city. Saying “my town has a population of only X” doesn’t really work, because there are all kinds of places of different sizes within metro areas.
The original point I was responding to (in the other thread) was that supposedly people who live far from cities don’t worry about locking their doors.
ETA: Note that you said “if anyone’s gonna *break *in and kill you…”. That’s what they’d have to do, because I lock my door. For people who don’t lock their doors, it wouldn’t be “breaking” in, would it? But sure: I don’t have burglar bars over my windows, or a steel reinforced door; so if someone were determined enough, they could get in. I’m more concerned about someone quietly slipping in.
Our front door stays locked because we never use it. Our side door is hardly ever locked when we are home, and the walk-out basement door is often unlocked if I’m working down there. We live on a half acre plot on a somewhat busy street in a city of 87,000. Oh, and we live about a mile from an interstate.
For me it’s more about crimes of opportunity. The punk looking to quickly grab something will turn around and go away if your door is locked. Usually all doors are locked, unless I’m working in the yard. I’m not taking keys to mow the lawn so the back door, or basement bulkhead is unlocked.
Put me down as hating self locking doors. A boon to the locksmith community more than a safety benefit to the homeowner. It also encourages people to do things like keep extra keys “hidden” on the property.
Exactly. There was a mini-crime spree in my suburban neighborhood a few months ago and all of the people “broken into” had left their doors or windows unlocked.
I lock my doors because I find it comforting. However, I also lock my doors so that I don’t have to think about it: if I go through a door, I lock it. I really try to have routines in place that minimize those sorts of little decisions.
Our main door is usually locked; if the weather is nice, the inner door is open but the curiously strong* storm door is locked. The back door, which leads only to the dogs’ poop deck, is sometimes left open in the summer when we’re awake. If we’re working on the property, we usually have the garage open but the other doors locked.
I grew up in the city and my husband in an inner suburb, so locking doors is a hard habit to break. We always lock our car doors, even now that we live in farmer country. We probably will never get to the point where we leave the doors unlocked, even way out here in the cornfields.
We get some serious winds on our property, so we have a storm door that would give the Terminator a hernia.
