Do you lock your door when you are at home ?

[starrynight19]

Never thought about this but we never lock the door other than when we go to bed.
Talking to friends it seems that this is quite unusual , is it ?

I always lock both the front and back doors. The only time they're unlocked is literally when someone with a key is actually passing through them.

My front door has three narrow windows in it, which is great because I can see who's there immediately, and if I don't know them I don't even open it - just talk to them through the glass. Perfect.

I don't lock mine. I'm a single parent with an autistic DS and always worried me that I could fall or take bad and nobody could get in to help and DS couldn't get out in case of fire etc. I live in a semi rural area and everybody knows everybody else, I don't actually know anybody round here that keeps doors locked. Due to the layout of our houses, you couldn't sneak in anyway

Yes, I live in a first floor maisonette with my front door on the ground floor, I live in a very quiet area but I wouldn't feel secure if I didn't keep the door locked all the time.

Front door is a yale lock so is locked when closed anyway, and at bedtime we put the chain on and deadlock it. Back door is locked most of the time and the key is in the lock. Pretty sure insurance would laugh at any claim I made if burgled and hadn't bothered to lock the door, also I don't live in the most salubrious of areas and would rather not take any chances.
We have rehearsed what to do in a fire many times.

My front door can’t be opened from outside without a key. We only actually lock it (which means it can’t be opened from inside without using the key to unlock it) if the house will be empty or when we go to bed.

Always.

Never used to but my ex used to walk in and steal things of mine when we were joint owners. Now paranoid.

Yes, always. My house is so small that it would take seconds for someone to sneak in the front and steal my bag.
Back door too, unless it's high summer and all the kids are swarming out the back.

The only time we lock the door is when we go away (which is very rarely). The only time we’ve ever been burgled is when we were away with doors locked. They were looking for something specific that required tools to extract it so not locking the door wouldn’t have made any difference to that. We do live rurally though on a farm, and you would have to specifically drive here and not be caught by dogs first so unlikely to have an opportunist burglar passing by trying the door handle. There are also farmers wandering in at all times and I can’t be bothered having to open the door for them every time.

Yes, always. We live in what is considered to be a safe area with low crime rates but since our police station was closed, there have been a spate of burglaries round here with scumbag chancers sneaking in and grabbing what ever is handy.

One of my friends came in from the garden to find some bloke rifling through her handbag, managed to get a photo of him as he scarpered. Police actually caught him and he was on parole so thrown straight back in the clinker.

No, never. Our front door can't be opened from the outside but the back door can and we never lock it when we are in.

People do realise that "low crime" doesn't = "no crime"?

Also those of you who leave keys in the lock - this is one of the easiest ways for burglars to let themselves in. You may as well not bother locking the door if you're going to leave the key there for them (again, insurance prob won't cover you in this case either, so may as well cancel that and save the money!).

If you do it for fire etc reasons, add a key hook somewhere out of sight of the door and get into the habit of the keys always living there instead.

Yes even though I live in a rural area with very low crime rates (household crime anyway - not so much theft of farm equipment!). I have a large dog and a delivery driver just opened the door without knocking once to put a parcel inside - no idea why as I have a large parcel box outside the front door especially for this!! The dog was fine - just gave one surprised bark- but the driver got a fright as did I. I want to protect myself and dog against any accusations that may be made should he react badly to the sudden appearance of a stranger in the house.

I don't lock my door when I go abroad for 2 weeks. Or take the keys out of the ignition.

I don't lock it if we're home, always figured it was more important for DC to be able get out in an emergency. Lock it at night and leave the keys in the lock. Not sure if DC1 can unlock it, DC2 can't.

No, not when we're home as a family. If the weather's even vaguely nice, the back door, at least, is inevitably open. The front door is unlocked, if not open.

If it were just me at home, I would only lock it at night time.

If anyone came in the front gate our dog would start barking and although she's only a very small girl Labrador, she sounds ferocious, so any opportunist would move onto an easier target.

I’m another one who has never lived anywhere without a Yale lock so the front door is in effect always locked.

I honestly do not understand why anyone would not keep their doors locked in this manner at all times and don’t understand that despite the hundreds of stories and anecdotes on here and anywhere else, people almost seem proud about continuing to be lax about their basic home security. For those of you who don’t keep their doors locked, do you bother locking your cars? if so, why your car and not your house? I’m genuinely not trying to be goady but MN stumps me sometimes!

After suffering an attempted break on in broad day light last year, we ALWAYS lock the front door and take the key out of the door.

@TheHodgeoftheHedge there hasn't been a break in or violent crime where I live in over 8 years.

Four of the other people on my room are billionaires and live in 15+ bedrooms homes with Picassos, Matisse etc on their walls and don't lock their doors either.

I very much doubt anyone would break in to nick my ghds when they can nick a £10,000 bottle of wine from the unlocked wine cellar down the road.

I was talking with a friend this morning and she was saying that her house didn't even get sold to her with a key!

Thanks for the response @gotmybigbootson
That’s incredible. Can I move there please? :)
I guess I just work on the basis of why take the risk? Just because something hasn’t happened for however many years, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. Just like I wear a seatbelt in my car. I haven’t had a crash or needed it in 10 years, but that doesn’t mean it won’t haopen tomorrow, so why take such a huge risk over something so simple?

You know it invalidates your contents insurance if you leave your doors unlocked, and thus open to burglary, right?

Just seen your other post! Wow! Where on earth do you live?!

We live in an area of opportunists, so doors are usually locked.
We lock our windows open too if we'll be upstairs for a while.

I live on an island. But even on the mainland here most people don't lock their doors ever.

In London I had three locks on my door and wouldn't even dream of cracking my window an inch even if it was 50 degrees!