Our front door is always locked, but only because we never use it. We drive into the garage and come in that way, and that door is never locked. That back door and basement doors are rarely locked. And I think the only time we lock everything up tight is when we’re going to be away for more than a day or 2.
We live in a mostly rural county and both FedEx and UPS consider it safe enough to just leave boxes on the front porch. But we’re also secluded/out of view enough that if someone wanted to break in, even in the middle of the day, they probably could get in undetected. It’s not something I worry about, tho.
I live in a town of around 80,000 people. Don’t live in a particularly ‘nice’ area but doors are not locked during the day. We lock up overnight, except when we forget! Unless it’s cold, both the front and the back door are open anyway. We have screen doors but they don’t lock or provide any security.
Yes I always keep my doors locked, just for my own peace of mind, especially now that I live alone. The idea that someone could just walk into my house unannounced creeps me out, and keeping the doors locked is simple and effective basic security. My house has 6 levels, so it’s not always easy to hear what is going on in different rooms or floors. I live in a woodsy suburb on the edge of a medium sized city in the northwest. Very low crime, but we do have the rare burglary or theft, almost always from unlocked cars and unlocked houses.
I lock both doors if I’m home alone at night. And usually I keep the front door locked during the day and especially if I’m working in the yard. Learned that the hard way when my son had teen-aged friends.
Back door can stay open for the backdoor friends if I’m indoors.
The garage is always locked unless my husband is in it. His tools are his babies.
Last night I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and looked out the window to see a man standing by the garage door. You have to enter the back yard to do that. Lucky for him he was no longer there when my husband stepped outside.
Having had jewelry, a chain saw and a car battery stolen, gas siphoned and sundry criminal behavior visited upon us in the past we tend to get whiny about that sort of thing.
Yeah. I grew up in a lock at bedtime household. Now I don’t bother with locking my door even when I leave for work. Living in a gated condo complex probably makes this easier. I’m sure I’d be more of a locker if that wasn’t the case.
See, I’m wondering if the compulsive lockers are doing it out of paranoia? What is the real risk?
Well, OK, there are obviously people who lock because there are real risks. If I lived in a high crime area, sure, I’d be locking. Or if I’d had an experience or two with unwanted people wandering in (or worse), sure, locking would be automatic. But are you suburbanites really at risk? How many times have have you heard your doorknob being jiggled because someone was trying to come in?
Neighbor kids have been reported amusing themselves by climbing balconies and we’ve had one drunk neighbor kid walk in one night when we forgot to lock the front. Visitors to that family have also been known to get the wrong door and open ours, one floor below, by mistake
Why would you encourage people not to lock their doors? It sounds like someone saying, “You don’t need to fasten your seatbelt because you live in a low-traffic area.” Or, "Don’t wear a life-jacket in the boat. You know how to swim.
Haven’t you ever had to work and save to have things worth protecting?
Funny, that sounds quite high to me. After all, that is just within one year. In a two year span, your chances become at least as high as those of rolling snake eyes with two dice. Not exactly the most unheard-of occurrence. And then you roll again for the next two years, and again for the two years after that, and so on. Pretty decent chance of those snake eyes coming up eventually.
I have bad nasal allergies, so I can’t even leave doors open with just a screen closed. Nor can I leave the glass part of a window open for that matter. I have to keep windows and doors sealed all year long and run HEPA air purifiers around the house.
But I understand for people not burdened with allergies that it is pleasant to have fresh air and all that. What I don’t understand is not even having screens. With the door wide open, don’t you get all kinds of bees and mosquitoes and even critters coming in?
But you just said upthread that you live in a gated complex. So your real “front door” in a way is out at the gate. Leaving your actual door to your home open is like someone in a doorman building leaving their apartment door open. Not something I would do; but it wouldn’t freak me out as much as if it was just the door to the general city streets, which is what it is for me.
As for your question, I have never had my door jiggled when I was near it and a stranger was there. But the places in the house I hang out most of the time would not lead to me hearing it anyway. What has happened twice for me over the past 20 years or so is that someone I really didn’t want to talk to, an acquaintance who was a pest, basically (which is to say two different such pests in two different states), came and knocked on the door and my housemates and I stayed quiet waiting for them to go away. Both times, after knocking and/or ringing the bell for an inordinately long time, they did try the handle. So avoiding awkward encounters with weird/annoying people is enough reason in and of itself IMO.
I always lock exterior doors when I’m home. The only exception is my sliding patio door, and I lock it if I’m not in the same room.
It’s not so much paranoia about having them locked when I’m there as it is habit for when I leave. If I know that every door is always locked by default, then I can leave the house without having to run around double-checking everything.
I do leave many windows open and unlocked on both the first and second floors… even when I’m out of the house. So it really is just a habit of convenience more than anything else.
After giving it some thought, I will have to admit that maybe 2% of the reason I don’t lock the door when I’m home is a philosophical stance. There are times when I just get so fed up with the common idea that there are deranged people lurking behind every bush 24/7 waiting to do you harm, and you must be ever vigilant or your gonna die! But the other 98% of the time I’m just not bothering.
We’ve lived in this house going on 20 years and crime has never been a problem in this neighborhood. If it was, I’d lock my doors. About 15 years back, there was a family that had idiot young men living with them for a couple of years and they made my a bit nervous, so we locked the doors more. But they are long gone and it’s a quiet neighborhood, so we’re back to not locking.
Good point. I’m gonna have to think about that. Not that it really matters around here, as pretty much all home invasions are (corrupt) cops or (well-armed) fake ones after the same two things. Well, maybe three. I’ll offer anyone a beer to keep from being shot.
I’m with you on seat belts, but have you done any boating? I carry life jackets and throwables as required by law, but very rarely wear a life jacket while boating. I’ll wear one kayaking cold, fast water in the spring. Pontooning the Allegheny River I can’t remember seeing another boater with one on, though I’m sure some people wear theirs.
Car; locked except when entering or exiting, parked in locked garage
House; locked when not home, locked most of the time when home, except when expecting visitors
Cooper, my Portueguese Water Dog, is an excellent watchdog as well, if he doesn’t know you, he will alert the whole house to your presence, if you’re a member of the pack, you’re okay…
Growing up on the water a lot (Moosehead Lake in Maine and various lakes in Minnesota), everyone in my extended family wore them the whole time on the water. Same family always locked everything, and wore seat belts before laws required them. We are a wild, reckless bunch.
Suburb of New Orleans. We just lock them at night before we go to bed. Some friends of ours that live in the same neighborhood have had a broken front door lock for as long as I can remember. It’s a pretty safe place to live.
Can you explain that a bit better? Assuming the population/number of Burglaries and B&E’s don’t change, that random chance is independent from year to year. If my math is right, there is a mean number of 71 years before I could expect to get hit.
For me it’s a combination of laziness and the presence of two dogs who jump up and bark their fool heads off if a squirrel dares to step on the porch let alone a human.
It’s also a lifetime of the attitude of first visit you’re a guest after that you practically live here. My friends knock and then walk in. No sense someone standing on the doorstep in the rain when they could be inside getting shoes and coats off while I walk from where ever I was in the house.
When we move to the new house I’ll probably lock them for the first little while until I have the neighbors kids trained to not let the dogs out when they come in.
I do lock the front door if my husband is out of town, apparently I need both him and the dogs in the house to be secure enough to be lazy. Even then I don’t lock the back door though, the gate being locked is apparently secure enough for me. The human brain is weird
ETA: Doesn’t bother me at all that others lock their doors unless I’m trying to come in one with my hands full.
