I locked myself out of my home for the first time ever. No keys, no phone, no nothin’. I had to accost passersby to try to get a phone so I could look up my husband’s work number and call him. Because I don’t know any numbers because they are on my phone.
Surprisingly, I didn’t like this experience and think that it is overrated.
That is one of my worse fears since I only take a single loose key when I go jogging and tie it to my shoe laces.
Plus, my nearest relative with a key is 90 minutes away…
I didn’t notice that the house keys weren’t on the keychain one day. I did notice that I didn’t have my cell phone, but went “eh.” Then I came home to discover the extra house key was missing. Couldn’t call my damn husband (who knows where the damn extra key belongs) since I didn’t have a phone. Went to my neighbor’s house, where I discovered how few numbers I know by heart. Drove an hour round trip to get the spare key from my parents. Fun times.
I had never locked myself out – until my son was born and I had a vicious case of mommy brain and did it three times in his first year. I got a keypad lock for my front door after that, and I LOVE it. No chance of being locked out, don’t have to take a key when I go for a walk, don’t have to leave a key if I need someone to watch the house or let the dog out unexpectedly. Love it.
Heh. No, it’s not fun at all.
I have a spare house key hidden under a rock in my side yard outside the fence. But it’s only to my back door and thankfully I’ve only had to use it once. But then I had to retrieve it and climb over my privacy fence to get in through the back. Fun times.
Thank goodness for cell phones and smart phones, right? Otherwise you’d be borrowing 2 quarters to first call information and then call your husband!
I got locked out once but it was kind of silly. My parents live down the road and while they have keys, they didn’t have keys to any of the outside doors, just the inside door (inside the garage). The inside door was happily unlocked, but the outside doors were locked and so was the garage door (99% of the time I have my car!)
So my brother was at my folks’ and he came over. We were going to bust one of the plate glass windows in one of the doors but I remembered I had a dog door that the dog didn’t use. It was covered by a flimsy metal plate to keep out raccoons but I busted it down with a swift kick! Then my brother crawled through! Then he opened the door and let me in! It’s good that both of us aren’t super fat.
Anyway now I have keys for the outer door and inner door. So do my parents. And I have a keypad that opens the garage door like iftheresaway. That’s a nice bonus because if someone needs to grab something from my house and I’m not home (this happens) I can just tell them the code and they are in.
So jsgoddess what is your plan to avoid this situation in the future??
Asimovian and I were talking about that. My next step, if I hadn’t been able to find someone with a phone, was just to walk to his work. But what if he had been out of town?
We’re going to start keeping a key at his work (which is walkable) and a key with a friend. And I need to memorize his phone numbers so that I don’t need a smart phone to find him!
The fire department here will install a lockbox on your front door if they would need to get in during an emergency. With an elderly, infirm mother, it was a precaution we were glad to take…except only the fire department has a key. So when we needed a home health care aide for mom, my brother installed a regular lockbox on the door we use more often, and we didn’t take it down when Mom went into the nursing home, mainly because for the first time in my life I’ve started locking myself out. Used to hide a key in the unlocked, unattached garage, but in the winter it is a pain to slog through snow to the side door of the garage since we don’t shovel that area. The lockbox mounted between the screen door and the interior door has been a great help on at least ten occasions over this past year. Not just me locking myself out, but my kids stopping by and not having their key, or when relatives were visiting. As long as we don’t forget the combo, we are good.
One thing I really liked about my condo was that it would have been really difficult to break into my second floor unit. The bedroom windows overlooked common garage area and faced other windows, which wasn’t always awesome, but had the advantage of being way too public for ladder access. Front room window only accessible by propping up a ladder in a common walkway. Ditto balcony, and also very risky to climb.
So when I locked myself out (when the Kidlet was out of town, of course) I figured I was lucky to have my phone so I could call a locksmith. I felt even more secure about my premises when, after twenty minutes working on my front door, he turned to me and asked “Do you have any other way of getting into your house?” :smack: (He did get it open after another ten minutes)
This was 15 years after my only other lockout. I’d discovered ants in my apartment and in my haste to make a late night run to the 7-11 for some Raid, I grabbed the wrong keys. It was 10 o’clock at night. I did have my car keys and workplace keys and spent an uncomfortable night sleeping on the floor of my luxurious grad student office.
Ditto on the keypad lock! It was a breeze to install. I have it set to relock itself 30 seconds after opening. I got it when my teenagers would leave for school after I left for work in the monrning and they wouldn’t remember to lock the door behind them. Now I have the added bonus of freedom from having to carry a house key! I do have a spare in a realtor-type lockbox in back, just in case. It’s simpler than remembering where the fake rock is.
Hah, I recall how way back when I lived with my mother we both managed to simultaneously lock ourselves out. She ended up using an earring to pry an unlocked window open enough to get a grip on it. Ruined the earring though.
. Thank you eating during I once sleepwalked off my way out of my barracks room, at about 2 in the morning. I was stark naked at the time, and the office where a person on watch had a spare key for me was all the way across the base. I had to pound on my next door neighbor’s door and wake him up to get him to lend me a pair of pants.
It never happened again, but I did spend the rest of my military career wearing skivvies to bed.
Stupid voice recognition. Nothing to do with eating. It happened in 1989.
Not quite the same, but…
A couple weeks ago my girlfriend went jogging at night, normally we go together but I had work to do at home so she went alone.
After about an hour, as I was starting to wonder why she was taking a long time, I got a phone call from an unknown number. A positively fuming, hardly restrained GF (borrowed phone) asking me why I wouldn’t open the door for her, she had spent the previous half hour knocking, ringing, pounding and kicking at the door… next floor neighbour’s door. :smack:
See, that’s why I never lock my house. I can’t even find the keys. If I ever sell, I’ll have to change the locks.
I guess if I did somehow lock myself out, I’d slide open a window and go through there. Even if I had to break a pane, I can reglaze the window myself.
StG
I was terrible for losing keys and locking myself out. Then I lived in a building with an electronic fob and no way in to the building at all if I forgot them (except for buzzing my neighbours, but me being a shift worker often rendered this impractical). I quickly learned to keep track of my keys, and now clipping my keys to my purse has (almost) become second nature.
At my very first apartment, the shrub outside my door picked my pocket, and I didn’t discover my keyring until I’d paid a locksmith a stupid amount of money for new car keys and new door keys. At least I didn’t have to worry about anyone stealing my piece of crap car.
We have a keypad for our garage, which is fine unless we lose power. We do have front door keys, but we never come in that way. We had to dig them up for our pet sitter. My big worry is that someone will lock the door between the garage and the house (like I did once.) I don’t think we have a key for that door - I should check. Luckily, the time I did it, the basement door was unlocked, so I got in that way. Otherwise, there would have been broken glass.
I am trying and failing to imagine a worse place to carry a key.
Doesn’t anyone hide a key any more? Under the mat, on top of the door frame, in hte tree in the front yard?
StG
When I was pet sitting I couldn’t tell you how many clients called me to let them in after they had locked themselves out.
They always offered to pay but I never took their money, getting locked out can happen to anybody.
I usually don’t lock my bedroom window so if we get locked out we can borrow the neighbors ladder and get in that way.