This is my policy as well. I never, ever, ever buy anything, donate to anything, or listen to anyone coming to my door for anything. Selling stuff? If I wanted/needed it, I’ll find it myself. Donations? I pick my own charities, and even if the ones I donate to come to the door, I don’t donate at the door, and tell them so. Surveys? No. Political stuff? I can find my own information, thanks.
It makes it easy. I open the door, they start their spiel, I say “I don’t buy, donate, or listen to people at my door. Have a nice day” and close the door. Save me time, saves them time.
Don’t know about you, but my front door and front screen door are always locked. My back door and back screen door are locked when gone, and the pair are unlocked only during the day when we are home. The dog in the back yard keeps people out of the back yard during the day. She has permission to eat intruders as far as we are concerned. Not to mention geese in the yard make wonderful nasty watch pets. Between the geese, ducks, chickens and guinea fowl nothing bipedal can really sneak up on the house. At bedtime everything gets locked down.
I have been known to answer the door with a gun in the unseen hand after dark. I do sleep with a gun in my bedside table. There is always a light in the main room of the house so I can identify who is walking around in my house all the time. [it isnt a big house, 800 sq feet, the distance between me and the front and back doors [both in the kitchen end of the house] is 30 feet.
Halloween is different. No one is trying to snow me, I know exactly what I’m getting. For the price of a few chocolate bars I get smiles and cute kids in costume.
That said for the last couple years I’ve had to leave the porchlight off. My rescue is afraid of masks and doorbells and the whole halloween experience is just too much excitement for her. I spend the night in the basement bedroom with a shivering dog on my lap.
Sometimes neighbors come to our door to talk about stuff. You know, “you left your car lights on,” or “did the pool passes come yet?” or “I am in a gang and we will beat up your wife for calling the tow truck when we parked illegally.” We are happy to talk to most of them (I did call the police for that last one, though.) Fortunately we have a peephole.
But we do get solicitors despite the sign. I’ve learned that they all want to take from us – our money, our votes, our souls, and always our time. I marvel at the bravado that enables them to push past the sign in an attempt to take things from perfect strangers, but I will not cooperate with that taking, any more than I would cooperate with Viking raiders similarly hellbent on taking things from their victims.
Spending Halloween in the basement sounds kind of cool.
We have two “no Soliciting” signs on the front door. Saturday morning there’s a knock on the door and I answer it to find a cute young thing and her elderly chaperone. “Hi! I want you to know that we’ve seen your sign and we’re not here to sell you anything. We just want to bring you some good news from the Bible!” “So you’re here to sell religion, then? Goodbye.”
A couple of hours later, another knock. Another CYT, alone. “Hi! I’m here asking for your support for Tim Hudak…” “So you’re selling politics? Not a chance in hell.”
My wife: “Who was at the door?” “Someone stumping for the Ontario Conservative Party.” “Ewwwww!”
I think that the next time I’ll yell at them in Russian. Or maybe Cantonese.
I let my husband handle this. He enjoys interacting with kids, and I don’t. We have a similar rule of thumb in our area, and on those Halloweens when he doesn’t feel like handing out candy, he doesn’t turn on the light. If he’s working or otherwise unavailable, then I’ll hand out candy for a short while, but I generally turn off the light at about 8:30 or 9:00. Halloween is for LITTLE kids. The light is a signal that trick-or-treaters are welcome, despite the sign.
At the entrance to the development where I live there is a “No Soliciting” sign, clearly visible from both the street and the sidewalk. This did nothing to defer the elderly (well, he looked to be about ten or twenty years older than me, anyway) from ringing my doorbell yesterday morning and when I opened the door starting in on a speech about how he’s from the local Kingdom Hall and he wanted to talk to me about the current state of the world and how Christ is the answer. Or something like that; I tuned him out almost immediately when I heard the words “Kingdom Hall”. My initial response of “Sorry, I’m not interested” barely slowed him down, so I added, “I don’t share your belief system, so there’s no point in wasting any more of your time” and shut the door.
I noticed, however, that there were several more people standing on the sidewalk who looked like they were waiting for him before proceeding on down the street. This was only the second time I’ve had someone come to my door pushing religion in the three years I’ve lived here, so I’m guessing that most of them are capable of reading something other than the Bible.
