We never locked our door when I was growing up. (Mostly on Navy bases.) Even if we had, there would have been eight kids leaving a trail of lost keys behind them.
When I started living in cities, I started locking up even when at home.
Having just spent much of the weekend working on political campaigns, either doorknocking or dropping literature on peoples doorsteps, I’m astounded at the number of front doors that are not only unlocked, but left open!
And this is in a big city (Minneapolis), and some of these neighborhoods were not the best.
We left Denver last year.
We had lived in the heart of the city.
We never locked our doors there, or needed to, until the last two years we lived there. We definitely needed to those last two years, and if we had not had large dogs, I would have kept the doors locked even while I was home.
Where I live now, we do not lock our doors.
I keep my doors locked; I think I’m more aware of security as a single woman. It’s not a big deal though; except when I’m out walking the dogs, I usually exit and enter the house through the garage. The automatic garage door opened is my “key” and I do leave the garage/house door unlocked (except at night). So I’m not constantly locking and unlocking doors.
When I was a kid in Montana in the late '70s early ‘80s, we never locked our doors. We certainly knew what “latch-key” kids were who had two working parents (as most of us did), but we didn’t carry keys on shoestrings around our necks like kids on TV did. We just went home and went in the house. I think I was going off to college before I had a key to my parents’ house. In high schoo, if you were out, they didn’t lock the door until you came home, and then if you were the last one home, you locked it behind you. Dad did lock the door at night (once all kids were in) and when we went out of town, but that was it.
I lock my doors when I’m away all day at work. On weekends though, I usually leave the place unlocked if I just have to walk to the local shops or something like that.
When I lived in Seattle (in a decent neighborhood on Beacon Hill), all doors were locked all the time, even if someone was home. Cars were always locked, even if we were making a quick stop.
Here in rural Iowa, the only time I lock the house is when hubby’s gone for a few days, and it’s not because I fear anyone, it’s because my bedtime reading sometimes frightens me. I’m not worried about housebreakers, I’m worried about vampires.
We babysit a neighbor’s dog when they’re on vacation, and they leave their house unlocked for a week at a time. I guess the dog is enough of a deterrent. Everyone in town’s afraid of her.
But people here leave their garages open, cars unlocked, windows open, bikes in yards, etc. In the summer, stores have sidewalk sales and leave items outside on tables, unattended, all day.
The other day I stopped at a convenience store – left the car running and my purse on the front seat.
Being able to do things like that almost makes up for the utter lack of any of the amenities of urban life.
1983, rural England. Went away with my folks for a three-week vacation. At the last minute I realised I’d forgotten something. Ran back in, grabbed whatever-it-was, and ran back out again. Left the front door open for three weeks, with no bother.
Moved to rural Ireland in 1995. My then-girlfriend’s parents left the car unlocked with the key in the ignition, whenever they were at home. They only stopped about three years ago when their house got broken into - though the car was left, due to its being a piece of shit.
(By contrast, every single time I or a housemate left the mortice lock off the door in Dublin, we got burgled. And the other day a friend in Dublin left his French windows unlocked - not open, just unlocked - and somebody stole his wallet from his kitchen table while he was in the living room.)
I never lock my car at home, at work I leave the keys in it (I work in a small office but it’s located in the middle of a 40 acre farm.) The only time I lock it is when I’m in the nearest city, 45 miles away.
Oh two more things, my iPod often stays in my unlocked truck. When the mailman brings packages that won’t fit in my mailbox, he’ll put it in whatever vehicle I have in my driveway. So if I’m expecting a package I have to check there every day or two. The iPod never has been touched.
Also, one night a few years ago in Charlottesville VA my friend and I went to see a movie. When my friend closed my passenger door, he didn’t realize the seatbelt kept it from shutting, and it bounced back a couple feet open. We came out a couple hours later around 11 or 12 at night, and when I saw the door open I was like, “Oh shit!” But I saw the seatbelt was the cause, and my cell phone, CDs, and whatever else I had in my car wasn’t touched. That gave me a little hope for mankind. It was probably mostly luck that the wrong person hadn’t noticed though.
But I just remembered – I’ve had tapes stolen from my car here, while parked in my driveway, and a friend left shopping bags in her car while she was at a bar, and the bags were stolen.
Still doesn’t beat Seattle, where we lost a television set, several bicycles, a purse, four cars (two of them recovered), a radiator, a car battery, lunch money, shoes (don’t ask), and car headrests.
Don’t lock the doors, keys left in the ignition, otherwise how the hell would I know where they are?
I lock the doors (and windows) if we’re all going to be out but not if anyone is home. The house is usually unlocked at night as well.
I rarely lock the doors, which annoys my husband to no end. I can never find my keys, so if I’m running to the store, I just shove the two little kids in the stroller and go, figuring I’ll be back in 15 minutes. What are they going to steal in 15 minutes? Plus, any thief would break a leg navigating the minefield of toys in the living room. (If someone broke into our house in the middle of the night, we would be awakened by a barrage of Bob the Builder noises, and fire-truck sirens, and Tickle Me Elmo giggles, and monster-truck Grave Digger sounds, as the hapless thief scrambled to get away.)
Then again, I grew up in smallish town Midwest, so I’m not terribly paranoid. My husband grew up in south Philly and the less-good parts of Baltimore, so he’s a bit more cautious.
I am careful to lock the garage, because that’s where the power tools live.
I live in Chicago. I cannot imagine not locking everything down. My doors are locked even if I’m inside the house. Our garage gets broken into about once every four or five years. My friend stayed over one night and I let him park outside the garage in the back and his window was smashed and car stereo was stolen. I’ve already had my car broken into twice this year (not in my neighborhood, though–once in Milwaukee and once in Hyde Park Chicago, but both times the burglars gave up before taking anything.) Back in college, I’ve had two car stereos stolen in three days. The first time I didn’t lock the car. The second time I did and they smashed the window–all for a friggin Radio Shack car stereo that cost maybe $50.
So, yeah, I lock everything.
I should point out that a hotel valet forgot to lock the car in the first instance, and in the second instance, my girlfriend forgot to lock her door. So, basically, yes. Here in Chicago, if you leave your car door unlocked, sooner or later somebody will break in.
My brother and sister-in-law live in New York City (as do I) on a pretty popular street in NoLita. They live in the first floor of an apartment building with a door that is always locked. However, although it is possible to lock the front door of the aparment itself, they never do.
I live in a high rise and lock the door if I’m out for an extended period of time but otherwise I don’t bother. There is a concierge and residents/guests can only access their own floors by lift.
This one might be a little long, but I want to give a little background. Me and my girlfriend are both from a small town (two stoplights in the whole county) and we grew up with doors unlocked, keys in cars, windows open, and all that jazz. I can’t speak for where she lived in this town before I moved in with her but I can talk about the 4 places I’ve lived since I left the small town where everything was open.
1.) On campus at Morehead State University - my room locked automatically, but at night or when we were home, me and my roommates left the door propped open just cause we normally were running in and out and didn’t want to carry keys.
2.)A small apartment in town (once I transferred to Shawnee State and moved in with GF) - we lived in an old garage converted into an apartment. It was in a horrid area that was near a street where a lot of local prostitutes hang out. They would walk down near our apartment and solicit to passerbys on the next block. We locked the cars, doors to the house…everything. I know that the chances of something happening so quick were slim, but I would lock the car just to run in and grab my bag and come back out. It would have to be locked during the day as well, because the prostitutes and druggies would walk over that way and if the door was unlocked they would open in and look around (this happened twice). I was so glad to move.
3.)Downstairs of a house, historical district - we were closed to campus and surrounded by older homes, a church, and the metropolitan housing agency building. I locked the back two doors all the time, but the front door would be unlocked when we were there. A couple times, we left the car unlocked when we took the other one out of town for the weekend. It wasn’t on purpose, but nothing ever happened while we lived there.
4.)Downstairs of a house, near the hospital - wonderful area. Most neighbors are retired so they are home all day. The area is quiet, police patrol extra, and we are the only rental within a few blocks in any direction. I don’t lock my car often, especially since it is gone so much. I leave my back door unlocked or at least the window in the back of my house because I’ve locked myself out of the front at least 6 times since I moved here (I am so forgetful). We did have someone open the car door one night and start to go through the stuff in console, but our dog and neighbor scared the guy away. Nothing was missing, and honestly, there wasn’t much to take (a beach boys tape and some cigar wrappers…worth stealing? nah)
So we do normally lock our doors, but not when we are home or at night. Often we simply forget at night, but I don’t believe that will happen too much more now that I’m not working 3rds and I’ll be home in the evenings.
Brendon
My wife and mother-in-law are, in my opinion, excessively paranoid about the possibility of a break-in. They insist on having the door double-locked at all times, whether they are inside or out.
Personally, I like to keep the door locked just because the delivery people here tend to be rather casual about opening doors to drop off packages, and I’d like a moment to put on some pants when they arrive (what? When it’s 98 degrees and humid, I’ll be in my boxers thank you very much).
We never lock our doors. There is almost no crime in Okinawa, but we didn’t lock them in the States either. In the states we had two very large indoor dogs who took home security seriously, you would have had to be nuts to come in w/o permission. Here’s the thing: until recently, when we bought a bunch of scuba equipment, there just wasn’t that much valuable, stealable stuff lying around. If we locked the doors and someone broke a window or kicked in a door we would either have to fix that or pay the insurance deductible and resulting higher premiums. Then, when we sold the house we would have to tell the new buyers that there had been an insurance claim and give details. In all, it would have been cheaper to just let the people come in and take the four year old computer and cheap t.v. and be done with it. But we’ve never had a problem.