Do you lock your doors

[Scrambledegghead]

When you’re in the house? So you’ve come in, shut the door behind you and you’re going to be in for at least a few hours. Do you lock it behind you or leave it unlocked because you’re in? We leave ours unlocked and DM has made me promise never to do it again but I can’t get out of the habit! She locks hers when she gets in even if she’ll only be in for 5 minutes before going out again, whereas unless we’re going to bed, ours stayed unlocked.

should I be making more of a conscious effort to lock it, lest a murderer or a burglar comes in or am I in the majority?

Back door always locked.
Front door no, because too many of us coming and going. If I lived alone it would be locked.

No I don't lock, drives my mum mental! Obviously I do at bedtime, and usually early evening if DH is out.

Anyone could just wander into your house and murder/rape you!

How are you not terrified??

We leave it unlocked. We live in a very quiet area. If I lived in a busy town or city I would probably think differently.

Locked as soon as we walk in. I live in an area where there's been lots of sneaky break ins.

Unlocked until bedtime. Visitors walk in without ringing the bell too. I do sometimes wonder if I should lock it but like you I can’t get into the habit, I live in a safe area too.

Yes, I lock mine behind me when I come in and so do the kids.

We lock our doors.

Anyone could just wander into your house and murder/rape you!

Assuming this is a joke..?! Hard to know here sometimes

Ours locks automatically, just a latch, not a deadlock, but if it didn’t I would lock it.
The back door is unlocked though. It’s a pretty safe area in a city.

Our front door can only be opened with a key, even if it’s not locked. We don’t lock it but we do put the chain on when we’re in, to prevent the children opening it.

Lock it the moment we come in - our insurance is invalid if we leave the house unlocked and we have had 4 attempted burglaries and 2 thefts from the garage. We live in a city.

My parents only lock up overnight. They live rurally.

Always locked

Mine is a Yale lock so it’s effectively locked once closed and if I’m going back out I wouldn’t lock the deadlock as well. I’ve walked into and through my parents house from the unlocked back door without them realising I’d arrived just to make a point re. burglary risk!

Live in the middle of nowhere so our doors are only locked at night. When I lived in a city I kept the front door locked but the back door was unlocked if I was downstairs (enclosed back garden).

no, we lock it when going to bed but it can only be opened from the outside with a key even when unlocked

Always locked. Why wouldn’t you lock your doors at all times?

Unlocked, until 11pm. Left unlocked even when we go out sometimes not knowing who has and has not taken a key with them if they have just popped out. We live over a mile from the nearest neighbour and on a hill with visibility all round so anyone with nefarious ambitions is unlikely to have the confidence to prowl on the off chance. If they do they might regret the dog. If we lived in a town centre or a city it would be a different matter.

I was trying to figure out if it was a joke too but that’s exactly what my mum says, in a very serious way.

we live in a very quiet area and it’s made me so blasé about it; our old house was in a not so nice area but the door was one of those that locked automatically behind you so we never thought about it and never built up the habit..

Never locked, patio doors generally wide open from morning to night and front door most of the time wide open unless a delivery driver or the postie shut it.

That’s what our old house was like!

my dads given me a chain we can put on the door (he knows me well enough to know I’ll never remember to lock it, despite my promises) but it’s such an eyesore. I’d find it easier to remember to put the chain on though.

my issue is that when I walk through the door I’m usually laden with coats/book bags/water bottles/a toddler that everything gets dumped on the floor and I don’t go back to lock the door.

Doesn't this depend on where you live?

My friends who live on the outskirts of a small town don't lock their doors in the day if they are downstairs.

There as my friends who live in the centre of a city lock their front doors at all times. They leave their back door open if they are on the ground floor as you can't easily access their house from their garden.

Front door always locked, we lock it as we come in/go out. Back door is sometimes unlocked during the day if we are in, but we have an enclosed yard so there are not likely to be any passers by chancing their luck like their would be at the front!

Depends what you mean by locked. Our front door has a Yale type of lock and when it's shut it's 'locked' to the extent that nobody can walk in off the street without a key. That lock can also be turned using the key when you're outside to double lock it, obviously we only do that when we are both going out and the house is empty, as you can't then open it from inside. From the inside you can operate what I think is called a snib and then nobody outside could use a key to get in. That front door also has a chain, and also another super-duper mortice lock which we also lock when we go out (either of us) so we need 2 keys to get in. They all get locked up when we go to bed, and a chain put on.

The back door into the garden has a simple mortice lock and kind of bolt things top and bottom that you stick a ridged kind of key into and turn clockwise to put the bolt into the frame and the opposite way to bring it back. All three are done up at bed time and during the day the top and bottom bolts undone but the key in the lock is turned to lock the door unless we want to go out and (in my case) have a gasper.

We'd feel vulnerable if we didn't do all these things. Plus every window has a lock and these are only unlocked if there is a need and locked again afterwards.

I am not a door locker or even closer BUT I don't have a toddler, if I did of course I would be locking the door.