I always lock the door when I come in, I always lock my car. Honestly, it’s not cause I don’t feel safe but because I am really into rituals and habits. I hate, hate, hate the idea of having to decide when to lock my doors and when not to–that sounds unbelievably stressful and icky. Since locking the door involves no real effort, it is really much, much easier to always lock the door and never even think about it. For the same reason I always drive with my headlights on and put on my seatbelt even if I’m just moving my car out fo the driveway and onto the street.
Also, I often go back to the bedroom to read around 7 and end up reading til I fall asleep some hours later. This isn’t ever planned or anything, so if I had to lock the doors before I went to bed I would have to have to worry about falling asleep before I locked the doors. That would add stress. Much better to just know they are locked because I always lock it as I close it.
Here in central New Jersey, locked, all the time. Mostly because I don’t want to get hurt, but they’re also locked because I don’t want that feeling of being violated if stuff gets stolen (had that happen). I don’t care about the stuff so much as wanting to avoid that ugly feeling.
When I lived in Pocatello, Idaho, and growing up in southern California, the doors were left unlocked during the day, and locked when we went to sleep.
I don’t lock anything. My truck, my house. It doesn’t matter whether I’m here or gone - they stay unlocked. Of course, I have many large dogs, but basically I can’t be bothered. I don’t have much to steal and I’ve never felt unsafe. I come from a family that never locked doors.
It’s funny - several years ago I not only left my van unlocked but left it running for three hours at a multi-plex movie theatre when I went to see “The Green Mile”. Nothing was disturbed when I got back to it.
Yes, I do. But I live in a “diverse” neighborhood.
When I was a kid, we lived in a non"diverse" neighborhood. We left the doors unlocked in the day and even overnight. No one ever broke in.
I live in NYC. My front door is almost always locked, whether I’m home or not, Not because I’m afraid that someone will come in while I’m home during the day , but because the door automatically locks when it closes. I could leave it unlocked whenever I’m home, but then I would have to make sure I locked it at night and when I went out. Since I seee no advantage to leaving it unlocked, I just leave it locked.
We generally are unlocked when we are home awake. Happily we live in a relatively low crime area with good police protection, houses in our neighborhood are very close together and us and our neighbors all know each other well and keep an eye out.
While burglaries do happen around here home invasions are not common. So I am more concerned about someone taking our stuff (I do worry about coming home and finding someone in the process of burglarizing our house though, that kind of situation could get dicey fast if someone panics).
As my location says we live in a small town about 25 miles outside of the city of Boston.
We do lock the door at night, even though we live in the country. Why? Because my husband is a city boy, and he just isn’t comfortable going to sleep when the door is unlocked.
I’m not quite sure how to answer the second question. I’m not that afraid of people taking my stuff; stuff can generally be replaced, and we have renter’s insurance. It would suck and all, but I don’t usually worry about it.
I would be more upset, to state it mildly, if an intruder hurt my husband or me. However, I consider the likelyhood of that so much lower that I worry (inasmuch as I worry at all) more about my stuff getting ripped off.
Vermont, a rural area in midst transition to suburban.
When we’re both out, all doors are locked. OTOH, we leave ground floor windows open and protected by nothing more than their screens, so we really aren’t all that security conscious.
When we’re both home, the doors are unlocked during the day, locked at night.
When I’m home alone, the doors are locked ALL the time. Even if I’m just going into the backyard to rake or something like that.
Reason: safety, definitely. Neither of us are into expensive possessions very much. Hey, our ‘big’ tv is a 15 incher. We don’t have a DVD player, or even a vcr. Our furniture is an eclectic mix of hand-me-downs from both our families, stuff picked up at garage sales, and even a few things cleaned from the street side before the trash crew made it around. The appliances…eh, the best you can say is they’re ‘well-broken in’ and still work, most of the time. If any deluded burglar broker into our place, he’d probably sue us for wasting his time.
I never lock the front or back doors, ever. Well, if I leave for a month I do lock them. I live in downeast Maine. I lived in Upstate New York for nine years (1986-1994) and I never had a key to the front door; it was one of those old skeleton-type keys. I worked away from home during the week. I’ve never had a problem. However, I do lock my car now because my youngest son had a fit and my new car has a lock/unlock on the key so it’s easy. But, truthfully, no one here ever locks their car. Actually it would be weird to see someone locking their car at the IGA.
a) Do you lock your door when you are in the house? Why or why not?
Nope. It does feel like being locked in. I’ve never lived in a place that I’ve had to lock the doors.
**b) Are you more afraid of someone breaking in to steal your stuff or someone breaking in to do you harm? **
Neither. My house would be better equipped with a revolving door. I run a computer repair business out of my home. People know that if I’m not home, they can drop their computers off, with a note. Others know to come in and pick up their computer if I’m not there. (I leave it by the door with the bill and instruction sheet.)
Alberta, Canada. The city I live in has a population of about 13,000.
As my location says, I’m in a big city in a country generally viewed as pretty safe.
Mostly, I lock my doors when I’m home because my wife and MIL have mastered the art of tag-team paranoia. When I go out, I don’t really worry about stuff getting stolen, but since locking the door only takes a second I do it anyway. Ounce of prevention, I guess (that, plus the fact that my wife goes berserk if she sees me doing it.
Another reason I lock the doors when I’m home alone is because is seems to be accepted practice in Japan for bill collectors and delivery people to do the ‘knock once and open’ trick when they come to your door.
a) Do you lock your door when you are in the house? Why or why not?
Yes, both the front and back doors are always locked, and if I’m in the house the chain is on the front door. I think it started as common sense from the days when I lived in iffy apartment buildings in iffy neighborhoods, but now it’s just what I do to both feel safe (as a young woman living alone) and to ‘shut out the world:’ when I’m home, especially on a weeknight, I’m usually not in the mood for other people to be around. If I want to socialize, I’ll go out (which I sometimes do). Most of the time I don’t even answer the door if the doorbell rings.
b) Are you more afraid of someone breaking in to steal your stuff or someone breaking in to do you harm?
I don’t think there’s any genuine fear involved – at least, not anymore – it’s just more of a comforting habit at this point.
At the last apartment I lived in I actually had to install a front door chain, because on two occasions I got out of the shower in the morning to find maintenance in my apartment (luckily I used to shower with the bathroom door closed, so I was able to hear them before embarrassing anyone). I hadn’t called them either time: they were investigating a water leak in the apartment below mine, and both times they claimed that after they entered the apartment they didn’t hear the shower going OR the radio that was playing loudly in the bathroom. :rolleyes: Damn right I got a chain.
a) Do you lock your door when you are in the house? Why or why not?
Nope… we don’t usually even lock it when we leave unless we are going to be gone for a while (like on vacation). We usually leave the doors wide open at night in the summer to get a nice breeze. I usually lock the car when I go places, but more out of habit then actually thinking it might be robbed.
b) Are you more afraid of someone breaking in to steal your stuff or someone breaking in to do you harm?
Uhm… not really afraid of either but I’d be more afriad of someone doing me harm… you can alwase buy more stuff
a) I lock the doors when I leave the house. I have two big dogs that like to wander in and out of the house, so I leave the front door open when I’m at home.
b) Neither, really. The dogs are big and terrify strangers. Thieves would think twice about coming onto my property. As for people hurting me, the dogs sleep on the bedroom floor. The first sign of trouble and they’d be all over an intruder. They wouldn’t let anyone touch me.
Max.
The doors are usually locked all day and night at my place. My apartment building has a front door that’s never locked, because other neighbors just seem to like to leave it open. So because I’d rather not have anyone try to get into my place, I lock the doors. The windows are fine… you’d need to be an expert climber to get all the way up here.
I’m not in a high crime neighborhood, but my aunt had her purse stolen from her house a few years ago. She had it near the door, where she dumped it as she came in, and she went about her business. A few hours later when she passed by again, it was gone. Even if she lives a half hour away, it’s made me paranoid and I like my doors locked. And my purse goes to sit on my bed when I get home.
Until I read this thread, I never even considered the “do you lock your doors” question to mean “do you lock your doors when you’re home?” We keep both front and back doors unlocked when we’re home. Sometimes Mr. Legend forgets and locks the front out of habit when he comes in from having a smoke, and that often leads to children coming home from the park and discovering they’re locked out. The back door is almost never locked; it’s glass panes from top to bottom and there’s a relatively high wall around the back yard, so I figure if someone’s back there trying to break in, it won’t really make a difference whether the door is locked or not. Our dog also stays in with us when someone’s home and out in the back if no one is, so anyone trying to come in an unlocked door would be greeted by a ninety-pound dog.
I always lock the front door when no one’s home, and we always lock the cars, no matter what, because I just assume that an unlocked car will be burglarized or stolen. I guess I’m more worried about someone breaking in to steal my stuff than breaking in to harm me. That’s probably because burglary is far, far more common than violent home invasion.
I lock the cars, the house, oh, and I keep the fishing boat in the garage. The house has a fancy alarm. A few years back, somebody rifled my fishing boat for $1400 in gear and a camera, when it was parked next to my driveway. I realized that good, honorable folks will not open a door or steal your goods when it isn’t locked. Thieves have no such limits. So, your unlocked house is accessable only to criminals. If a thief finds your door locked, she’ll go rob your neighbor. :smack: It isn’t hard to figure out.
Funny. I lived in a non-diverse neighborhood in the “Happy Days” 50’s. All working class white folks, mostly southerners, in a small town (Bakersfield) where the minorities knew where they belonged and stayed there, except to clean up after the well-off (not us) white folks. It wasn’t at all unusual for somebody to burgle your home, and very common to have your bike stolen. Yeah, we locked up when not at home. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the big (white) kids beating up the little ones and taking their money.
It wasn’t untill my dad got sick that we had to move to diverse (very poor) neighborhoods, and we learned what a real neighborhood was. Then we could drop our bikes in the front yard, ours or someone elses, and it would stay till we claimed it. Unless some kid took it for a spin, but he’d bring it back.
Odd how people have such different experiences, isn’t it?
Sorry, I had early on where this was going eventually.
If I’m in the house, awake, and likely to be going back outside any time soon, I leave the door unlocked. If I’m gone, asleep, taking a bath, or just home for the night, the door is locked. Securely. With two deadbolts and a chain, if I’m inside where I can reach them. I also keep my car doors locked when I’m not in it, and when I’m driving through a large city with lots of traffic stops I’ll lock them from the inside. This is a constant no matter where I am nor how “diverse” the neighborhood is. When I lived in the cheap apartment complex just off the main commercial street through town, I followed this routine for door-locking. When I lived in the trailer in the middle of nowhere with my mom and dad, I followed this routine. Now when I live in the somewhat-ritzier apartment complex far back off the road way on the outskirts of town and next to a gated community, I follow this routine. I don’t really like taking chances.
I grew up in upstate New York and currently live in a small town northeast of Dallas, Texas.
Gunslinger, who lives with me, locks the door all the time, whether he’s planning on going back out soon or not. I have to knock for him to let me in when I come home for lunch. And he grew up in a small town, too.
