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?

We live rurally with only a few neighbours and we always lock our front door when we come in. Back door is often unlocked while we’re in or even open as the dogs like to go in and out.
Both our daughters live in towns and leave their front doors unlocked while they’re in and are happy for friends etc to just walk in.

My front door cannot be opened from outside unless you have a key (the same as every front door in any house I’ve lived in). I double lock it at night and when I go out which means it can’t be opened from the inside handle without a key either. Back door is locked unless it is open - I do leave it open a lot in nice weather but lock it if we are going out / to bed. Garden is only accessible if you climb over several neighbouring gardens.

The front door locks when you shut it, you need a key to get in from outside. I never use the deadlock or chain. The backdoor is often open when we are home but I tend to lock it when I shut it so I don't go out leaving it unlocked.

I'm interested to know what area you live in if you can do this.
I'm in fairly rural Scotland and people did this 40 years ago but not now.

Always lock my doors! I'm from Liverpool 😅

Also put my central locking on when I'm driving around town. Never been carjacked (that's Manchester) but once had my bag pinched from my passenger seat 😕

Always locked as soon as we get in.

I'm living in rural South Wales in a downstairs maisonette and never lock my door during the day.
I also sleep with my kitchen and bedroom windows open....for the cats and also because I'm menopausal.
If I go out my windows are usually still open.
I am overlooked by lovely neighbours, many of whom do the same.
It's a relic of fifties life that just seems to have continued here.

Always lock, my dh forgot once and someone walked in off the street, only about 10.30 at night and stole our car and laptop.

On the Isle of Wight. My parents are in their late 60s/70s and don't lock their doors apart from at night time. We often leave back doors open. They've lived in the same house for 40 years and been burgled once.

I'm not particularly bothered if I forget to shut my back door and find it open on my return. I live in a market town surrounded by rural villages. I like it locked at night as I wouldn't want an intruder while we were sleeping and they may find my car key. There's nothing to attract thieves in the house.

My back door is always open for the dogs, unless it's winter and cold, but even then it's unlocked.
I only lock it when I'm either not at home or I'm going to bed.
The front door locks automatically anyway and can only be unlocked by a key from the outside.
I live in a normal suburban area.

I think thieves tend to scope out properties. We've had a suspicious individual seen to be scoping out our street and neighbouring areas. I'm not particularly worried, people on the estate watch out and if they jumped the gate into the back garden they would see a small television, desktop monitor on a upturned cardboard box, maybe battered headphones, and look elsewhere.

Front door needs a key to open, but we don't lock it from the inside. Back door never locked if we're in, and frequently wide open, front door often propped open too. Doors are shut and locked if we go out and overnight, as long as we remember. Low crime area in the Suburban South East. Neighbours all have their doors wide open in the summer too, have never heard of anyone having an intruder! Not something I give a second thought to, and I feel perfectly safe. Do all the people who need their doors locked at all times feel unsafe if they're sitting in the garden, or walking up their road?

Unlocked but we live in one of the safest areas in the country.

Two of us in the house and its locked at all times when in. We live in a quiet and safe area but it got to be locked…

Doors to front are locked - since a delivery driver let himself in. Back door unlocked, usually wide open in summer, during waking hours.

If I'm on my own I lock the door as I am mainly in the back of the house. If everyone is home it's unlocked. Locked at night obvs

My front door automatically locks, and I lock my back door with a key, so yes.

I didn't until this story now I do every time I walk in.

www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/burglar-who-raped-mother-daughter-24822942.amp

Of course

Unlocked until bedtime

My front door is automatically "locked" in the same way as Labefana described. I lock the back door unless I go outside.

until we moved here to a small market town deemed ‘safe’ by residents, we lived in SE22, quiet, respectable, affluent hotbed of criminal intent by non residents of SE22 so that at some point we decided our house wasn’t safe at all, front door locked at all times, enclosed back garden, wooden fence ideal for villains to climb over.
The local wonderfully comprehensive forum would sound jungle drums re dodgy random callers, anyone saying “I opened the door and…” usually roundly castigated,
’meter readers’ ‘water board miss’ the usual ploys, increasingly creative and crafty.
Houses were entered by unlocked front doors or easyopen Yale locks, householders burgled whilst they slept, awful, frightening, pedigree dogs taken, bicycles removed from sheds, cars taken from front drives on gravel !

For all you blase commenters believing that you are fireproof, that random villainy will never reach you, spend a while on YT watching Doorbell News which is also available on your Shorts.
Yes I know it is America. As soon as Ring sets up a similar channel here,
you will see, drink, drugs, paranoia, knives are endemic now, making doorstep theft of parcels minor matters.
Smack heads, deranged, insane, deluded, wicked, homeless, nothing to lose zombies are out there, not just going through your bin and making the dogs bark at 3 am, trying your door and checking access to your garden, but that this also happens in Broad Daylight.
Secure patio doors before picking your child up from school, don’t take chances,
don’t leave windows open as you will ‘only be gone ten minutes’ as that is all the time they need.

Nosy neighbours can be a blessing. How many of you are members of your local Neighbourhood Watch or even have one.

Those of your assuring us that as you live rurally you are quite safe need to read the FW of gangs at night thieving farm equipment, plant, tractors, loose dogs - why do people in isolated locations, quiet hamlets or villages, have lights on and curtains open, OR be out for the evening leaving JUST the hall light on?
Rural areas are vulnerable for different reasons. Men with shotguns lurking by moonlight are not Gabriel Oak.

Don’t open the door to unknowns! open a window to ask their business if its an unknown caller, much safer.

Our safe quiet town had its own drama few years ago, with drug dealing, stabbing, death, not even Safetown is immune from the modern curse, lock your doors,

A few years ago I got out of the shower to find an Amazon parcel had been placed just inside the door by the delivery person… Kept the front door locked since.

Back door often unlocked as we let the dog in and out but the gate is locked from the inside so garden is relatively secure. I do lock it if I’m planning to be upstairs for a prolonged period though.

I used to leave mine unlocked until certain visitors thought it meant they could walk into my house without phoning to say they were coming. Now it's only unlocked if the DC are in the garden, when I lock the gates.