What do you do with keys?

[Yesitsbess]

For clarity, I am fully aware of how keys work and that's not the question but:

I have a drawer full of keys that I have entirely forgotten the purpose of but absolutely cannot throw away just in case I am ever presented with a lock I can't unlock because I threw the key away.

I know at least 3 of them are for a property I haven't lived in for over 2 years. One is for a bike lock I no longer own and two are for padlocks far lost in the mists of time. I just can't throw them away though!

Please tell me it's not just me who has this.

MAKE THE SPOOKY LIGHT FITTING!

Or Santa thing.

Either way, I feel your pain.

I have a bag of 40+ random keys I use for a series of drama / writing lessons.

1. Pass round the (soft, canvas, drawstring) bag and each take out a key.

Look at your key secretly and identify its colour, its shape and any particular characteristics. Warm-up: Everyone stands up and one person describes their key, feature by feature. Sit down if your key does not match, eg. My key is golden. When one is left standing - are the two keys identical? Or have you missed something? Write paragraph one, beginning, 'The key was'... or 'It was a (adjectives) key'... Try to describe precisely.

1. Where did your key come from? Think how you might have acquired it. Did you find it? (Wher? When?) Did someone give it to you? (Who? Why?) Did it turn up in a magical or mysterious way? Tell your partner the story. Partner tell it back to you and add some extra detaii.

Write your second paragraph, about how the key came into your possession.

1. What does your key open? A door? A box? Or what?

Take your key, and silently act out putting it in the lock and turning it. Is the keyhole high so you have to stretch up? Is the lock stiff so you have to use two hands? Show us what you have to do, but stop at the moment the lock turns. Write para 3 about what you open. Describe the door / box carefully, and the keyhole, and exactly how the key turns in the lock. What do you hear?

1. What is behind the door / in the box? Does it surprise, delight or shock or scare you? Freeze-frame the moment you open it. Show on your face how you feel. Others describe the expression. Show, not tell

• eg. don't say she is shocked; say, 'Her eyes widened, and her hand went to her mouth'.

Write para 4 - the Opening. Think 'Show, not tell' and don't tell the reader (yet!) what you see...

Last lesson - write the rest of the story you have started.
What did you see? What happened? And what happened to the key at the end? Did you keep it? Lose it? Pass it on?

Fabulous, precious, magical things, random keys...

Leaving aside all the crafting, drama props and Christmas decorations, because I'm not getting into that, but we too have a small drawer of random keys in an ikea mini storage thing in the bookcase and also a section of the cutlery tray.

I'm sure some of those are surplus to requirements, but I also suffer from the 'fear' about throwing them away, although I think I could manage to do so if I knew they were for past houses, bikes etc.

We also have lightbulbs for long gone light fittings and cables and chargers for appliances we no longer own. Must get round to getting rid of these.

@Yesitsbess

As long as the keys are in a drawer in the kitchen with loads of other random crap, such as, batteries that could well be dead, old phone chargers for phones you no longer have, random coins for currencies that no longer exist, it's perfectly acceptable to keep the keys.

I am in the process of emptying my in-laws house, we have a massive pile of keys that I have no idea what to do with, I don't know what they are for but I can't get rid. I have identified one lot, window keys that do not fit any of the windows. The others, no idea.

It is up there on the most stressful things with the house clearance.

I was desperate for a random pile of keys when planning an escape room activity as a party a few years ago!

We have a pile of bike locks with no keys. Maybe we should get together...

Me too OP.

I still have the keys to our old front door, which was replaced about 4 years ago!

Kon Marie is your friend here

We KMd our house, including the drawers of doom that had all the keys in the world in it. And becaus we had Km'd the bike locks we knew which keys to keep.

Our process:
Get all the keys together
Label the ones you know , Put in a lovely box somewhere . I found labelling the ones we kept to be highly reassuring.
For the rest, go around the house and check if they fit anywhere.
If they don't then put them in a separate box for 12 months. Labelled "dispose of in sep 22". This time next year make a mobile, burn them, wind chime them, recycle them. Anything but keep them.

Our key drawer is a thing of beauty now.

Lots of good advice here and I am very glad I'm not alone! I also hold my hand up to the mobile phone drawer, one day I will get all the pictures off them (with the help of the charger drawer of doom) and recycle them....

I Marie Kondo'd the shit out of mine 🤣

I've clearly been doing adulting wrong, I don't have a single unidentified key. I feel like I've somehow failed...

Well me and @Aroundtheworldin80moves have obviously taken on your share of the key/random bike lock requirement for adulting.

You're welcome.

Yep. We have a jamjar of keys, and when we moved into this house we inherited a load of old keys, still hanging on hooks in the garage, no idea what they were/are for. I'll probably leave them when we move

Ours are in an old marge tub on a shelf in the outhouse. Along with other “might be useful” things that DH won't get rid of.

Oh I yearn for a skip just to reclaim the space!

@ablutiions

Kon Marie is your friend here

We KMd our house, including the drawers of doom that had all the keys in the world in it. And becaus we had Km'd the bike locks we knew which keys to keep.

Our process:
Get all the keys together
Label the ones you know , Put in a lovely box somewhere . I found labelling the ones we kept to be highly reassuring.
For the rest, go around the house and check if they fit anywhere.
If they don't then put them in a separate box for 12 months. Labelled "dispose of in sep 22". This time next year make a mobile, burn them, wind chime them, recycle them. Anything but keep them.

Our key drawer is a thing of beauty now.

I do this for wires...all the chargers, connectors, tv sockety things.

Dh like to keep them just in case, and DS1 always says he'll have them and never takes them, so I do not say anything to anyone about them, I do exactly what you have described...seal in a dated box and then set a reminder on my phone, and off to the tip they go on the due date.

No one has ever ever EVER had cause to undo that dated box before its DumpDate.

Having said that, years ago I did a car boot sale, there was basically a feeding frenzy around a box I had taken full of cables and flexes, all men of a certain ages, all very excited and gleeful and inspecting ends of cables.

Mine live in a little drawer until I move house, then I toss them. And start collecting again 😅

I'm going to get all of the keys tonight and stare at them until I remember which ones are useful. I may even find the ones for the roofbox that have vanished. 8 billion (approx) useless keys and I can't find those.

These are the loose ones. My only question here is: does anybody know what and alchemy cash box is?

Because that sounds like something I will require in my new career as a witch.