Do you keep the door to your home locked all the time, or only when you are away, or only at night, or what?
I just discovered that my architecture has shifted, and I can’t lock my apartment door, the bolt no longer matches up with the hole. I have no idea how long it has been, it’s been maybe a year since I tried to lock it.
As a general rule the house and car are always locked.
There are times when the weather’s nice enough to open the doors so we do. That means turning off the alarm but that’s no big hassle as long as we’re near enough the main door to see anybody arriving.
We paid for the alarm system so we damn well use it!
It varies a little. I don’t lock the door to my apartment just after I enter, as a general rule. (Maybe if I’m jumpy about someone else in the hall, which has happened like twice.)
But aside from that, if I’m walking through the front hall, happen to notice that the door is unlocked, and don’t have plans to go out in the next hour or whatever, I’ll flip it locked.
When I’m not inside it.
My mother has taken to locking it some of the time while inside, which sometimes leads to problems. For example, she’s locked it, she’s left the key in, and one of us comes visit. We can’t get in until she comes to unlock for us. Did I mention that she rarely wears her hearing aids while in the house?
Sometimes when we go to bed at night.
Don’t bother any other time.
Always. The only time it’s unlocked is if I know I have company on the way and I want to them to be able to let themselves in.
When I feel I’m pretty much finished going in and out for the day. Or, when I walk by and notice, it’s unlocked still.
But I have a dog. Who still lets out a bark when the post man approaches the house, everyday. So I’m confident that no one can get near my house that I won’t hear a commotion.
With the exception, of course, of my husband. But it still sometimes spooks me when he comes quietly in, without speaking to the dog. If I’m upstairs I can just hear the sounds of someone walking around downstairs. It does make me pause at first. A little creepy.
It is locked all the time when we are home and when we are not. We live in a safe neighborhood, but we are just so used to locking it no matter , it is automatic.
For my spouse, I’ve learned to lock the door whenever I’m not walking through it. On my own, I only lock it when I’m asleep or if I’m out for more than about 20 minutes.
I checked when I go to bed. I have adult childern now, so I’m lucky when I can manage that.
-every night between me arriving home (I’m usually the last person to get home) and me going to bed;
-when I leave the house early in the morning (pre-6:30 a.m.) and the rest of the family is still asleep;
-when my wife and I are leaving the house when our kids are still home;
-when we’re all leaving together.
During the day when we’re all coming and going, the door stays unlocked. For the record, we come and go through the garage, so the front door stays locked until someone rings the bell, which is rare.
The door is always locked, even if I’m just going down 1 floor to get the mail.
I lived in the murder capital of Florida for 20 years. Hard habit to break. I locked and had alarms on all entryways there.
I lock myself in. I don’t feel like locking up on the way out (and unlocking on the way in) - there’s nothing here to steal and no one here to kill so I don’t lock the door. The garage is locked up but the side garage door is not a safety door so I don’t consider that too much of a deterrent.
It did just occur to me that if I need emergency services they may need to use force to get in if I’m incapacitated but I’m sure they can handle that.
I just checked and four of the five exterior doors were unlocked. The only one that was locked was the main front hall door. I can only think of one occasion in the last two years it has been used.
People who are proud to never lock their doors pop up all the time, and I just don’t get it. I don’t care if you live in Mayberry, if for no other reason you should do it because I can’t imagine that insurance companies like to read “there was no sign of forced entry, homeowner reported leaving door unlocked.” Couldn’t they refuse to pay up? Even if you don’t live in violent crime land, there are bored teenagers everywhere.
But mainly, it seems like some (not all) of these people seem proud of being lazy. Went for a jog, didn’t want to bring keys? Fine. But you can spare the 1 second before and after you go to work.
This makes me think of something (although I’m not responding directly and this appears to be a legitimate complaint). Locked doors are a very good thing if you have relatives who love to drop by unannounced.
If given my druthers, my door would only be locked if the house was empty or everyone was asleep.
However, the roommate that we’ve recently aquired feels unsafe if the door isn’t locked at all times. After some negotiation, she’s eased up enough to not get upset if we have the door unlocked (or even ajar!) when people are in the living room and guests are expected.
Why do I prefer it unlocked? Mostly because I don’t like feeling constrained, and the comfort of others-locked-out is less important to me than the discomfort of feeling-locked-in. It also feels unsociable and unwelcoming - I want my house to be a place that people can drop in, where if they knock on the door I can just say “It’s open!” and they can enter at will. Having to go to the door to unlock it and let someone in and then lock it back up again just feels…stingy. I can’t really put it any better than that.
Also - in an odd way, locking my doors when I’m home and awake makes me feel less safe. Every time I do it, I think “Oh, gotta lock the door to stay safe.”, when normally I don’t worry about whether or not I’m safe at all, in my own home. It adds a little insecurity.
Now, I say all this living a happy little lower-middle-class life in a particularly nice suburb of Los Angeles. If I lived in a different neighborhood, it would probably change. But the privilege of keeping my doors unlocked is part of what I pay for, and I should be able to do it, dammit!
When I go to bed, and when I leave for work (wife home alone).
Always. Except when it’s not. Sometimes I find that it was left open from the last time the dogs were let out. Not a big deal, I feel very safe in my neighborhood.
Most of the time we go through the garage anyway.
Always. I was a latchkey kid and it was drummed into my head at a young age. It’s been a completely auto-pilot habit for decades now.
Mostly locked. But I feel safe where I live and I have three dogs, one of whom barks at everything moving in the vicinity. So when I am home I am sometimes lax about it. Like right now, actually.