Until recently, I only occasionally locked the doors, more to keep visitors from inadvertently letting the dogs out than anything. After discovering my ex-boyfriend lurking in the dark at 530a recently,though, I’ve been more careful and have keeping everything pretty secure.
You’re way overthinking this.
Who disapproves of people locking their doors?
Nevada: Door is locked when we are at home (townhouse is medium sized complex).
Prague: Door is locked when it is closed by the design of the door… technically it is not locked but you still need the key to open it.
Dubai: Door was never locked even when we were not at home.
I read that as a suggestion that people who leave their doors unlocked lack common sense.
…Conversely, I think that it’s just common sense to leave your door unlocked - why make it any harder to walk in and out?
We did leave our doors unlocked when we lived in a high-crime area, with a lot of people always in the house, with no air conditioning, when we were poor and young and had no possessions. And we did have someone wander in. Not to worry, since we had no possessions, and the kind of person who wanders in to commit a crime is not someone you have to seriously worry about.
At two subsequent houses where we kept the doors locked it certainly didn’t make me feel any safer. We had break-ins, and that could just as easily have happened when somebody was at home.
As a kid, we had a latching front door. We all had front door keys from the time we were old enough to play unsupervised.
Doors are never locked where I live now (rural area). Not at night. Not in the day. Not when we’re in. Not when we’re out. There’s no need. Plus there’s several valid reasons not to (for my situation)
When I lived in suburbia, I locked the doors when I went to bed of an evening, but they stayed unlocked during the day. It just was easier to pop in and out whenever we needed to without worrying about locks, and nobody else would ever just walk in. I had zero reason to suspect a random stranger would walk in during the day, but to avoid a casual burglary attempt, I thought it prudent to lock while we were sleeping.
When I lived in an apartment, I did lock during the day (the door was a self-lock from the outside, so it required no effort anyway). If I still lived in an apartment, or in an environment where I thought someone might walk in, I’d definitely lock during the day, so my stance isn’t philisophical. I figure most people behave rationally depending on the environment they’re in. I am not surprised that some people lock always. I would in some circumstances. But in my circumstances, it isn’t necessary. Horses for courses
Tryi to follow along, please… I was responding to a post from** sweetie pea** which stated: “I grew up in a very small town where locking your door at night/when you weren’t home (let alone during the day, when you were home) was considered odd and overly paranoid behavior.”
I don’t have one either (for the first time in my life) and the house is a new build. Anyway as I type this both my doors are unlocked, I’m sat at my kitchen table with the back door open to ‘get some fresh air in’ as they say. If I was going upstairs for a shower or something (or going out obviously) I would lock them, otherwise I don’t worry during the day if i’m home. I usually lock them at sundown but to be honest it’s more habit than any kind of ‘worry’ … I live in a fairly quiet average UK town with a fairly low crime rate (youth’s sealing an unlocked motorbike to ride around on or drunk men fighting after a night out in the pub, are the usual kind of things) so it’s pretty unlikely that anything will happen in my home. It’s not something I really think about or consider happening to be honest.
We usually enter and leave the house through the garage, so we actually use the doors quite rarely. Even then, though, we lock them- because if we’re in the house, odds are we’re in the basement and we wouldn’t be able to hear someone enter. And, of course, if we left it unlocked at all, we’d very likely forget to lock it again.
I have no gates, no guns, no dogs, do not lock the door when I’m home, and usually don’t even close it during the summer…just have the screen door closed (unlocked)
We live in a fairly nice gated neighborhood and we keep our front door locked/garage door down at all times unless we’re out working in the front yard. When the weather is nice, all the upstairs windows are open and the back door is open with the screen door closed. The back door gets closed when we leave or go to bed. There have been some home invasions in the area (but not in our neighborhood) in the past, and I’m home alone most of the time since I work from home now. However, we’ve got two big ass dogs that would get seriously rowdy if someone tried to break in. They start barking when someone leave a flyer at the door.
When I was a kid, the front and back doors were almost never locked during the day when we were home. It just got locked when we left or went to bed.
I had a friend in Omaha who had her window smashed and all they stole was an old CD she had in the car. She now leaves her car unlocked so she doesn’t have to pay for another broken window to be fixed.
You mean this ** sweetie pea** who locks his/her doors:
Please, follow along.
I’m going to bed now, and I just wanted to point out that I’m going to leave the front and back doors unlocked. Take that! Hahaha!
“Dereliction of parental duty” is absurd. By your logic, I shouldn’t just be locking the door, but I shouldn’t be letting the kids out to play, because what is the point of a locked door when everything I care about is on the outside of it?
Locking the door and sending the kids out to play cracks me up. “You kids get out there, but for heaven’s sake remember to keep that door locked and bring your keys, because lord knows the actually important stuff is inside.”
Strange!!! Now-a-days, I find it STUPID!!! I mean, when I was a kid, my birth city was safe(?) enough to leave our doors unlocked overnight with any of the 7 of us at home. Later years, I wished we would lock the doors because my best friend would just walk in when she came over–never knocked–because our family’s knew each other.
After all the kids moved out & we would visit our mom, we would always lock the screen door–at least–& the door at night when we were home, because of the migrants started staying year-round instead summers only, rise in homeless, teens acting out & rise in crime.
My mom & sister finally got a security system because they could not leave a window cracked anymore. Someone broke into the house & stole computers, cameras, phones & jewelry. He is now serving time for robbery, but not for robbing my mom or sister:(.
I moved away, I had a two(?) room flat. Always kept my door locked because there were druggies, suicidal & nosy people in the building:rolleyes:. My second apt had Cuban drug dealers, control freaks, suicidal, sexually promiscuous, registered sex offenders & nosy people:rolleyes:. My third apt had sexually promiscuous, loud night time parties 7 days a week, child abusers & I lived in a corner apt with one entrance/exit:mad:. The house I was buying, the neighbor across the street had anger issues & acted like he owned the neighborhood–telling people what they could & could not do in their own yard at different times of the day:rolleyes:.
The safest place I ever lived was in one of the more dangerous parts of the city at the time. Two murders, an accidental death, four fun related incidents, three gang affiliated attacks, lots of prostitution, three domestic violence disputes in my building, attempted burglary & trespassing in my apt. While living here, I would lock my door, but leave every window & even my sliding glass door open while I was at home, over night, at work, or out of town over the weekend:eek:.
I now live with friends who did not think anyone would even try to break into their house. :smack::smack::smack: I am not gonna tell you why, but there are times they are both in the back of the house–day or night–& both doors are unlocked:dubious:. This neighborhood has rapes, murders, gang violence, shootings, grand theft, fires, accidental deaths, suicides, car & home invasions & [attempted] kidnapping. When I come in, I LOCK THEIR DOORS & ask them to get into the habit to do so, too.
Lock your doors when you come home, anyone could follow you in if you are not paying attention.
I wish my friends had this because they think no one will break into their house.
The two younger children are not allowed outside unsupervised. The two older children are allowed to leave the neighbourhood unsupervised, so it is not really relevant whether the door is left unlocked for them. We have never really had a transition period of the kids playing in the yard with us not present, at an age where I would not feel comfortable with them leaving the neighbourhood. So I don’t think we will do that with the younger kids as they get older either.
I think there is a kind of flawed logic, frankly, with that in-between zone. If kids are not old enough and mature enough to handle themselves 10 blocks or 20 blocks away, I don’t see how they are old enough and mature enough to be trusted to stay in the yard and not get into trouble. If we had a fenced in yard that they could not get out of except by coming back into the house or by one of us opening the latch to the gate, then sure. We are also not at the end of some suburban cul-de-sac. We live in a neighbourhood with a grid layout, on the corner of two busy streets, one a main traffic artery and the other where semis often park. (Bonus: we do also live just a block from the police station and in sight of it.)
LOL, you think this is some kind of good comeback? Better to keep quiet then to speak up and “remove all doubt”.
I guess I shall have to belabour the obvious: it was, or should have been, clear in the context of my post that I was referring to the small-town folk sweetie pea described, not to sweetie pea him/herself. Sheesh…
And this is the crux of the matter - this mindset (for where I live) is completely, mind-blowingly, paranoid. My younger kids (ok, one of them is older now, but when he was younger) have always played outside in the yard by themselves unsupervised, and I can’t fathom living in a way where I was afraid that my 6 year old can’t just go out and dribble the basketball without it becoming a whole event that I have to be present for. I don’t care how marginally safer it might be, the lifestyle change just isn’t worth it to us.
I don’t know what to say to this - they are clearly and obviously different things, starting with: I can hear my children when they are outside, and not when they are “10 or 20 blocks away”. They can come in quickly if something happens (and things do happen - injuries, etc). There are neighbors who know us. It’s frankly a world of difference and the equivocation is plainly silly.
nm
We live in a very rural area. I rarely lock the door, as I really see no point in it. Furthermore, we have four vehicles parked outside, and each key stays in the ignition. Been doing this for 13 years and have never had a problem.
–My younger kids are three and one. (Still sticking with the same answer?)
–Where I live, there are no neighbours who know us, or who live in the neighbourhood longer than a year or two (they are virtually all college kids).
–I would not be able to hear my kids outside (windows are always closed due to my allergies, and the HEPA air purifiers are fairly loud), nor would I be able to see them unless I stood by the window and watched continuously. In which case, why not just go out with them?
–As mentioned upthread, we live on the corner of two busy streets.
Given all this, I think my policy is more “sane” than “paranoid”. If you have a different setup, great. I still think people often get a false sense of security by reassuring themselves that their little kids are “right outside”, and then you get easily preventable tragedies like this or this. (“[T]he only way to prevent an unfortunate accident like this is you cannot take your eyes off of children for a minute because that’s all it takes.”)