For a while I lived with my Aunt and Uncle. There were 5 drivers in the house and 5 cars in the one lane wide driveway. That was where I first encountered the “key pot.” We all deposited our keys in a ceramic bowl near the door so that whoever needed to could get his car out. My aunt and uncle used their cars interchangeable. Whoever needed to leave first drove whichever car was closest to the street.
My husband and I have my car and his car. We each have the other’s key on our ring.
I heard the same thing that **Robot Arm ** did about a heavy wad of keys speeding the deterioration of the ignition. I tried to keep my own car key off the ring that I have everything else on but I ended up not having things I needed where and when I needed them. I keep a separate ring with a copy of my car key and nothing else on it, and try and remember to use it but my fat ring of keys has a car key on it.
I’m looking at possibly buying a newer used car. Until this thread it hadn’t occurred to me that a newer car might have one of those giant keys. That would require and adjustment to my key protocols because 2 of those on one ring would be too much for me.
In my family what we do is have separate keyrings. They may not correspond to a single item, but they’re set so that you can lend the whole keyring without having any problems. Work keys go in a separate keyring than garage-and-car keys, which is different from house-minus-garage keys; for each household, there is at least one set of keys which is held by a person not living in that house; if you’re not driving a specific vehicle, you do not carry the keys for it out of the house. We can borrow each other’s vehicles, or go to each other’s house on an errand (watering the plants when the owner is out of town, letting the plumber in), without any key-dances involved.
Middlebro’s work-keyring already counts as a dangerous weapon, I shudder to think what kind of ring size would he need in order to add the keys to between two and five houses (the two they own, plus Mom’s, Littlebro’s and mine) and three vehicles.
I just like having “my keys.” And I’m less likely to forget them if they are always on my person. And that would make it hard for someone else to use them.
We each have personal sets of keys, which includes keys to both cars. My keys stay with me- two work keys, two house keys, my car fob and my car key. His car has keyless entry, so I just keep the fob in a zippered pocket in my purse since I don’t need to pull it out to open or start the car.
No worries, no hunting for the right set of keys. Works for us.
Keys go with the person, except for the boat, which also has a house key on its ring. His key fob has office, house and lock keys, my key fob has just the house and safe dep box key.
Between hubby, myself, and our kids we have five cars. I have a spare key to each of the cars, which all hang on a hook by the back door. If someone is borrowing someone else’s car, they get the spare key.
Whenever we get another car, I always have spare keys made at the time. Does nobody else do that? I like to keep a spare key in case someone loses their key ring, locks themselves out, or the car has to go to the shop. It’s much easier to deal with those situations when you have an extra key.
For example, my son was out with friends the other night and left his key chain at some dude’s house. He was able to come by here and pick up his spare, drive over to dude’s house and retrieve the key chain.
Or, my daughter’s car needed some work done on it. I drove my car to her apartment, gave her my spare key, used her spare key to drive her car to the mechanic’s shop.
Matter of fact, I think I have two extra keys for each car.
Waaaaaaaaaaaay back when I lived with my parents, if I recall correctly, when I got my license I also got a copy of the car keys. Then again, I was one of those remarkably responsible teens who really wouldn’t take the car without parental approval.
My husband and I own two vehicles and we both have keys to both. We bought them new and they each came with two keys, so end of problem. We also have our own copies of the house keys, keys to the lockbox, and the computer. It puzzles me to do it another way. Even if we had designated “his” and “her” vehicles we’d still keep copies because, ya know, if we agree that one of us has primary use of a particular item we can adhere to that out of our own willpower.
But hey, if some other system works for you, more power to you.