I lock the doors when I go to bed at night, and anytime I’m not home. If I’m home, but going to be away from the door (e.g. downstairs playing guitar or working with power tools), I’ll usually lock it as well. Otherwise, I leave the door unlocked when I’m home. My wife locks it if she’s home and I am not (she’ a former cop’s kid).
The only time the door isn’t locked is when I’m doing things like taking the rubbish out or loading or unloading the car.
I feel I have to ask: what kind of situation do you live in where you feel safe this way? Are you in Amish country?
More or less. Rural area, last home on a private dead end gravel road. Two “neighbors” on the private road, one is a retired couple who are almost always home and observant.
I’m in a similar situation in the mountains. One neighbor. Dead end road. Need four wheel drive in the winter. If someone wanted into our house, a lock is not going to stop them (our dogs will though). I guess locks keep honest people honest, so there is that, but I’m really not that concerned about it.
Whenever I’m not walking through it, but mostly so that I don’t have to think about it, don’t ever have to wonder “Yeesh did I remember to lock the door before leaving for a month?”, the door is always locked, the motion to lock it is an autopilot motion.
& my girlfriend no doubt wishes I had the same autopilot reflex about turning off the light whenever I leave a room 
Are “living questers” like when you live somewhere but you have questions about it?
I needed to check more than one box. I lock my doors at night or when I’m gone for an extended period of time, but generally not during the day.
Pretty much this. I like to live in an area where I don’t HAVE to lock the doors, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not a good idea. I live in a fairly nice neighborhood, though there’s been some random teenagers doing stupid stuff, especially considering that I’m on the third floor, I don’t worry about my place possibly being broken into if I forget to lock it, or if I have company that needs to be in and out when I’m not there and can’t lock it. However, I still always lock my door.
The thing is, it’s not gonna stop anyone who really wants to get into MY place. They’ll break in or pick the lock or whatever. What it will stop is any sort of temptation from passersby. It’s the same reason I lock my car. I don’t keep anything in there worth stealing, and if they’re going to steal the car, having to break the window won’t stop them, but it will keep a curious idiot from walking by and hoping to find some loose change or whatever and possibly taking or breaking stuff because they can.
Even when I lived way out in BFE as a kid and knew all the neighbors for a few miles in any direction, at the very least, the door was locked when no one was home, though it was often unlocked during the day since people were often in and out and kids shouldn’t need a key to go play in the woods or whatever. But it was always locked when no one was there and at night.
To me, locking my house and my car is just a basic form of privacy. I don’t have anything to hide from the police, but that’s not the same thing as allowing a random search. I have no shame in my body, but that’s not the same as doing bathroom/grooming type things with people watching. I’m pretty open about what’s going on in my life, but that’s not the same thing as letting anyone just read my emails. So, similarly, I’m not afraid of getting robbed, but that’s not the same thing as leaving my home unlocked. And, of course, the times I have had stuff stolen from me, it was someone that was invited into my home that took it, so locks wouldn’t have helped anyway.
Same here. It’s just so much easier to leave the door locked - it becomes reflexive: insert and turn key, open door, turn key back and remove, close door.
Since there are only two of us living in my house (myself and my husband), and we both come and go exclusively through the garage, our front door is always locked unless we have or are expecting company. This has less to do with prevention of crime and more to do with the fact that since we don’t use that door personally, just keeping it locked all the time is less of a hassle. The only other door on the first floor is the sliding glass door to the patio where the BBQ grill lives, and is locked (out of pure, unadulterated habit) whenever the grill is not actively in use. The door from the garage to the house is never locked.
I don’t think my parents have ever locked the doors to my childhood home, but it’s in a very small town on an island in rural Alaska. I’m not sure they know where the keys are. I’m not actually sure the keys exist, frankly. Burglary is basically a non-existent crime in my hometown.
When I go to bed, when I leave the house, and “other” - if I’m going upstairs for longer than a pee. I live in a low crime area of a British city. Since I had a walk in burgulary when someone took my purse from the kitchen I take my bag and purse with me in the house.
We lock the doors before going to bed, when we’re going to be out of eye sight of our house, and when we leave the kid alone. Otherwise, it’s usually unlocked. The house isn’t very big and our dogs bark at anyone coming through the exterior doors. However, when we are asleep the dogs are asleep in our room also and tend to not notice anyone entering the house. There have been times when I came home late and everyone is asleep upstairs and no one notices me until I get up there. Which, as far as I am concerned, is way too late to notice an intruder. Thus we lock the doors when we go to bed.
Growing up, my parents’ house had doorknobs that would be locked from the outside, but we could still turn them from the inside without turning the little doo-hickey thing in the center of the knob. So when we closed the door, it was still locked. To get in, you had to insert the key and turn it, leave it there as you turned the knob to open the door. Once you were inside, you turned the key back which locked the outside knob, then closed the door so it was locked.
I can’t seem to find sets like that anywhere. I guess too many people locked themselves out that way. When I was young, we really didn’t need them. By the time I was a teenager in the late 80’s we did need them. There were at least 3 or 4 different gangs around when my parents moved out.
I (female living alone) was much more conscientious about locking my doors when my house was in a fairly high-density urban area. I’m still urban, but on the fringes so it feels rural. Also now almost at the end of a dead-end road, with neighbors who are home and observant most of the time. And armed. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one without firearms in the house, actually.
I have motion-detector lights front and back, the small noisy dog and it’s no secret I also have a 120 lb-plus Rottweiler. Who is actually insanely friendly and social, but who knows what he’d do if someone with bad intention came in here. (Not that I want to ever put him in that situation.)
Anyhow, my front door is usually locked, but I leave the back door open weather permitting when I’m home, because there’s a dog flap in the screen door so the dogs can come and go. To get into my back yard, someone would have to climb a 6-foot privacy fence, and, dogs.
Pretty much always locked. I’m not that worried about having a problem, it’s just a habit I picked up a long time ago when I lived in a college town. I was sitting in my apartment one evening watching TV and some drunk kid just opened the door and walked in. Startled the shit out of me, and he was messed up enough that it took a little work to convince him that he wasn’t in his buddy’s apartment. After that I made a habit of locking the door behind me when I came in (and there were two more occasions after that where I heard somebody try the doorknob). And like someone said upthread, even in good neighborhoods there are always some bored teenagers around that can get into stupid stuff.
When our kids were youngest, we left the front door unlocked all day. Then when the youngest hit ten and my wife started working again, the house was empty much of the day and we locked. We also bolt the door when we go to bed. When we moved in forty two years ago, the next door neighbor said she didn’t think her front door had ever been locked. That astonished me. We are not rural, but suburban, only 4 miles from downtown.
I live in a rural-ish area, but that isn’t really my reason for leaving doors mostly unlocked: If you can sneak past my dogs, or overcome them protecting their pack? My door locks wouldn’t have stopped you in the first place. If I run to the grocery store or such, and the dogs are home alone, I leave doors unlocked on the chance that maybe, if there’s a fire or something disastrous, time won’t be wasted trying to open a locked door to let them get out.
I’m pretty sure that, since we moved here in January, the doors have only been locked the tiny handful of times that my 13-year-old daughter was home alone or babysitting one of her little sisters. Poor kid is easily spooked, and even the presence of one very large loud “watchdog*” and one medium-ish not-loud guard dog (police K9, trained in bite work, very protective,) doesn’t calm her “what if” instincts.
*Great Pyrenees. 120 pounds of very, very loud. Not an aggressive bone in her body, but she’s fabulous at alerting everyone of any unusual noise, and I suspect that she might grow some aggression if a stranger scared one of her people.
I lock the door because it has a tendency to open itself in strong wind. The doorjamb doesn’t latch or stay in.
The moment Mr Boods steps outside.
I am more careful about having a weapon within reach than locking the doors.
We do lock the doors under the usual conditions.
Don’t have much to steal.
Closest neighbor is up the hill and to the South about 200 yards.
I have heard gunfire from every house that I would call ‘the neighborhood.’
All have dogs.
Doors are always locked here, unless I’m going through it or leaving it open for the breeze.
This doesn’t have much to do with personal safety. For safety purposes, I just care that it’s locked at night and when I’m not home.
The practice of always locking avoids the need to traipse all through the house checking locks before I go to bed or leave the house. If I know they’re all locked all the time, then I’m ready to go. (We recently had a thread about making appointments on time or late. It’s techniques like this that help me to be on time as much as possible.)