To think I might have been burgled?

I was also told this by a police officer friend. I mentioned that we should probably stop leaving out car keys on the shelf in the hall. He said leave them where they are it's far better for someone to nick your car than come upstairs where your family is sleeping to look for keys/valuables. For most people, their car is probably the most valuable thing they own. There's nothing in my bag apart from random shite.

A trusted neighbour could have a light fingered teen or new partner

I can't imagine being so untidy I didn't know if I were burgled, but assuming you are this must be very scary considering you were in the house. I wouldn't be leaving until locks were changed and police had finished forensics. Presumably your house keys were in the bag so they can come back another time and try for more stuff

And if you don’t leave them lying around, they’ll go searching round your house to find them. Potentially in your bedroom, or your child’s bedroom. I know which I’d prefer.

I would say unlikely based on what you have said. Depending on where you live, it is possible for someone to opportunitistically walk in and take something in the hall. However you have said several items have gone over the past few weeks. The chance of someone breaking in over and over taking small items is very low. It's more likely you have misplaced them. Sometimes we can conjour memories up in our heads. We have just moved and my DH lost his military ID. He ransacked the house as he had a memory of being at the kitchen table with his ID. We got a redirected letter from the old house a week ago saying the ID had been left in a hire car, hired before the move. The ID was never in this house but DH was convinced. There is a small possibility someone you know is taking them, but I would say far more likely you have misplaced them.

x post @Blondiebeachbabe

Exactly this. If someone is going to break into my house I’d far rather they have easy access to my handbag so that they can take it and leave, rather than come further into the house/upstairs to find something worth taking 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is terrible advice. My DH is a Police Officer. Police advice is to leave stuff where it could be quickly found if an intruder came in.

Imagine the intruder wants to find your purse.

Option 1 - bag containing your purse is in the hall. Intruder takes it and leaves.

Option 2 - bag containing your purse is in the bedroom. Intruder comes further into your home to find your bag, and he ends up in the bedroom looking for it. You wake up and scream. He has to make you shut up. Who knows how that story ends, chances are you get hurt, or worse.

Option 1 is safer. Yes, you lose your bag, but it's only "stuff". Cards can be cancelled and replaced.

Anyway Op, highly recommend camera doorbells. We have a Eufy one. It films every movement that happens, even if the doorbell isn't pressed. Any movement in the area, it starts to record. I'd get that up today!

Do any of your neighbours have ring doorbells or CCTV that might capture your house? Do you have find my phone on your work phone?

If your front door lock is just a Yale type lock they take seconds to open with lock picks and there’d be no sign it had been unlocked. If its a wooden door get a locksmith to fit a five lever mortise lock.

Keys should be left where someone can find them. You don’t want thieves looking round your house!! We actually keep ours in Faraday bags now though as there were a few car robberies in our old street where they copied the keys remotely.

As an aside, what is kept in a handbag?! I have my phone with me & Apple Pay, keys next to front door and my cards (which I never use) by the front door too. I have nothing to carry in a bag!

@BiscuityBoyle and @crackfoxy - glad it wasn’t just me who thought that was the advice.

Completely agree - it sounds counterintuitive but if a burglar is in your house overnight, you don’t want them hunting around for stuff, especially if - like many of us - you have DCs asleep in the house. If they’ve got in, it’s much better for them to be able to grab a handbag and car keys and go than have to spend time prowling round the house looking for things to steal. If they’ve got into your house, you want them out again as quickly as possible. Hiding things in your bedroom potentially puts you in more danger.

But the OP doesn't do that, she hides her handbag, not her belongings, which would be, er..everything.

I once had a purse go missing off a kitchen table. Nothing else, just a purse, so obviously didn't realise it was missing until I needed it, and then spent the next few days searching the house aimlessly. Never turned up. That house was the last house on a cul de sac, with no cut through, so the only people who could have seen it were those coming down to purposefully look into windows/ try doors, I was daft enough to presume it was safe. Always locked the front door behinde, but less often the back door, as I just thought it was out of the way enough not to be concerned.

Ages ago there was a thread on Reddit where, to cut a long story short, a guy posted that someone was coming into his flat at night and leaving written notes. Someone suggested getting a carbon monoxide detector which he did and it showed dangerously high levels. It turned out that at night, in an unventilated room, the guy was experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning which was causing him to write the notes.

Yep this happened to my mother,her car got stolen as a wee rat walked in off the street and swiped her keys.

Is the front door dead locked or just on a catch? The catches are really easy to break into.

Sorry but lol at the cats ain’t talking

In the late 90's I was renting a house. I lived on my own and worked. I kept coming home to a warm kettle. One morning as I walked down the hill to the bus, the elderly neighbours cat followed me part way down the hill. When I arrived home that night, the neighbours cat was sat on my living room settee. No windows open, nothing left unlocked, no obvious means of access but that cat was definitely NOT in my house when I left for work as it walked down the hill with me. I rang the estate agent and told them what was going on and they assured me that only they and the Landlord had a key and it wasn't them. I think they thought I had lost the plot.

I made 12 coconut macaroons for my mum and left them on the cooling rack with a tea towel over them. When I came home there were only 10.

I had a long narrow lawned back garden and needed an extension cable to mow it, which I kept under the stairs and the mower in the garage. I came home from work and the extension cable was on the worktop by my kitchen window, where I would put it had I been feeding the cord through the window to mow the lawn. Wet grass was on my mower blades. But I had not done this.

However my elderly dementia ridden neighbour had a newly mowed lawn and believe it or not, he had lived in his house since the 1920's and had never had his electric sockets updated so had no means to connect to modern stuff. In the past he had asked to borrow my mower (and electric supply) so he could sort his garden and on the whole when I mowed my lawn I now did his. He was in his late 90's and his house was like a museum piece and he had no-one.

I went around to talk to him, and he didn't seem to recognise me as his neighbour and in the conversation, I mentioned he had managed to mow his lawn and he said he found reeling the cable out and getting the cable across the fence difficult but had managed it. He had no idea that he was just confessing that he had been in my house and used my stuff without my permission. After some gentle teasing out, it transpired that in the distant past, a tenant had given him a copy key to feed his cat and watch the house when my predecessor was away. He still had that key and was letting himself into my house to check on things. He was very confused and whilst it freaked me a bit, I was grateful if was nothing worse. I retrieved my key and had a word with social services as he needed help.

My experience had a decent outcome, but the point is past tenants/owners may have the key....so changing the locks is the right way to go. Also check for lofts, some houses, especially those with flat conversions, have shared cavity walls which may afford neighbours access to your accommodation without your knowledge.

Go home and gut the place tonight and no doubt all the lost items will appear.

Very strange. Have you blocked bank cards?

What is the relevance of the carbon monoxide alarm? Are you thinking she's in a drugged like state and doesn't know people are entering her flat, or she's doing things out of character as effected?

This is the advice from our local police force after a neighbour woke up with someone holding a boiled kettle over their head threatening to pour it over them if they didn’t give them the car keys.

Our car keys and handbags now stay at the bottom of the stairs at night time, so they’re easily found before we are!

Yup. Burgled 3 times here. Left handbag hanging on banister downstairs and keys in bowl by front door in end. Didn't want them coming up stairs where my kids were looking for cash/keys etc