Ingenious ways you've got back into your house after being locked out

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This is not one. But I did just get locked out. I forgot I have to pick something up after work tomorrow and just remembered that I have stuff in my car boot so decided to nip out to empty it. Stupidly for such a blowy night I left my front door ajar (it doesn't have a latch for some reason) and of course when I came back it was shut. I do have a lock box in my back garden - under a bush, not attached to a wall so I went and got that but even under the porch light I couldn't see the numbers without my specs. Eventually I got the right code by luck rather than judgement. So, I'm stood there in my pjs, door locked, no key, glasses or phone and started to think about of alternative ways to get in. I didn't come up with any! But now that I am back in and safely on my sofa I was wondering if anyone here has come up with an ingenious way of getting back into their house after getting locked out? And give me tips for next time I get locked out

When I was a teenager, Mum and I came back from town and the bolt was on at the front door, so even with keys we couldn’t get in. Dad was in, but we couldn’t make him hear - we weee terrified he’d had an accident

so I borrowed a ladder from a neighbour and climbed up to an open bedroom window, got in and found dad right as rain dozing in the conservatory

about 20 years later, I took my two year old ds to visit mum (now a widow). She came out to help
me unload the car, and ds took the opportunity to nip inside and slam the door behind him. Mum had no keys, and there was no-one else in tbe house. Ds couldn’t reach the sneck and had danced off anyway.

we were frantic; mum had the oven on and potatoes simmering, and what if ds tried to ‘play’ with them?

so I knocked on the door of the same neighbour. Hadn’t seen or spoken to her since the last incident. I explained the problem and we looked at each other , thinking ‘This is surreal’. However, she bustled off and got out the trusty ladder, I shinned up it to the same bedroom window, corralled ds, and let mum in.

mum sold the house soon afterwards, so though we’re coming up to another 20 year anniversary, I won’t be disturbing that neighbour again

DS got locked out earlier this month and we were out of the country. He (17, 6ft tall and lean but not masively skinny) managed to post himself through one of those typical high up, thin conservatory windows as we had left the door from kitchen into conservatory unlocked for the benefit of the cats. We joke now that he has a future as a burglar if his A levels don’t go well 😂

I knew the back door from the house to the garden was open, but the garden gate was locked and bolted. I desperately needed a wee (I was about 8 months pregnant) so I hauled myself, giant bump and all, over the 6 foot high fence

Always good to have a back up plan

I give up on my post after 3 edits.

Summary: pushed my youngest through our tiny (she is tiny too) through our downstairs bathroom window.

Thinking about it now, there was a window (ground floor) open that I could have vaulted myself in through if I'd had to. No pregnancy bump though, just fat 😆

When I was a teenager I always forgot my key, I used to go round to the back of the house, take the cat flap out of the door and use a stick or anything I could find in the garden to push the key out the lock so it dropped down and I could reach in and grab it to unlock the back door!

Pop the beads out of a window and remove the pane . Scarily easy to do , my husband is in the door and window fitting business and people are always shocked when he shows them how to do it

The most recent- I borrowed a ladder from a local window cleaner and climbed into my kitchen window. I now have left a key with a shop 2 doors away.
Previously- from a chap across the road.
From a local locksmith
From a shop 1 door away (who I left a key with, but they shut down)
I've lived in my flat for 12 years so 4 times isn't too bad.

I was trying to think about that as keys are easily mislaid and there have been several times when I've been locked out.

One of the neighbours caught me trying to bust in the back door through the catflap muttering and swearing and said 'no no no don't do that, come round to my house until your husband gets back'. So then he actually left and abandoned me with his child and I had to sit with her for 2 hours until ex got back. Don't think I'd ever been so delighted to see ex. Nothing ingenious tbh!

I came back earlier from a family trip; my partner would be arriving about a day later. I realized that he had the house keys. I got into the back yard easily enough, looked around, and grabbed a machete he left out when doing some lawn work earlier that week. I used it to wedge open a window that looks completely fused in but actually won't lock (I know I know) in our bedroom and got myself in that way. Felt very Rambo at the end!

I've since fixed the window since a machete-wielding maniac could get through it.

When a teenager parents had gone on holiday and I was in house and got locked out and noone else there. Went round back of the house via garage where got a hammer, went up steps to back, broke already broken kitchen window with hammer, climbed in then got some wood and nail and boarded up window and cleared glass.

I did similar as a teen. Slotted in through the tiniest window

My teen got locked out after she took the dog out the front (he's elderly and doesn't really walk much but likes to potter on the front grass) and the door slammed shut. She didn't have her phone so tried to contact us through the ring camera but we were both working and not accessing our phones. When I eventually saw the notifications around an hour and a half had passed. I couldn't leave so finally got hold of DH who went home to find her asleep on a chair in the backyard, dog on her lap - the only bit of fence she could access to climb over had a lean to roof on the garden side, she'd had to haul the dog on the roof, climb up and then drop down into the garden. They'd been there around 2 and a half hours in the end.

My DB got locked out of his flat with no shoes or keys when helping the police with his mentally ill neighbour who was being sectioned. The police brought him round to my house for his spare keys at 1am in the morning - he also borrowed DS spare trainers!

We shave spare keys with a few trusted friends and family who are fairly local - not sure how else we'd actually break in....

My Dads front door just randomly wouldn’t open when he got home one evening. And he left the key in the back door so couldn’t get in there. His friend came round and removed the kitchen window and I went in that way.

Then once each locked us out of our own home but the first floor Juliet balcony was open. It was a new build, so one of the builders came and used a digger to lift him up to the door on the first floor and he climbed over the railing and got in that way.

We used to have a front door that if it shut behind you, you couldn't get in without a key.

I did that one day whilst unloading the car, and I'd thrown my keys on the stairs opposite the front door, about ten feet away.

I went over the road to my neighbour who I knew was a fisherman, and we managed to hook the keys on to the end of his fishing rod and get them out through the letterbox. I still can't believe it worked 😂

Don’t know about ingenious, but at 7 months pregnant I had to wriggle through a sash window after my toddler locked me out and her in.

I did look rather like Winnie the Pooh stuck in Rabbit’s burrow in the process.

When you younger I used to climb in the bathroom window, head first into the sink.
Other houses have required climbing through the coal hatch (very grubby).
Poking sticks through cat flaps to knock the key out of the other side onto the floor (quick and easy)
Climbing across from neighbours upstairs flat window into mine (terrifying)
Using ladders to climb in through upstairs windows.

Nothing recently though as we now keep a spare key close by.

My Sister managed to fit through a tiny open window after we had both climbed over the neighbour's fence (with their permission!) to get into our garden. My Sister was slim and petite whereas I was tall and overweight so wouldn't have fit through at all! We had both forgotten our house keys that day and were teenagers.

I have only locked myself out of my flat once and I left spare keys with my Sister but she was still at work. I had been looking after her dogs and got home to my own front door and realised I'd left my keys on the side in my flat that morning. Had to go back on the bus, total of 1hr 30 mins journey, to get the spare set and get back home.

My Neighbour once locked herself out and some random bloke she asked for help took the door frame off and used a credit card to open the lock!

as a teenager climbed up the drain pipe into the open loo window.
much to the neighbour's discomfort!

as an adult, borrow a neighbour's ladder, and he in fact climbed through our bedroom window

I used to do this regularly as a teen because I was rubbish at remembering my keys. Tiny window about two metres off the ground, and I’d sort of land arms first in the kitchen sink. If I got locked out of that house now I’d just have to stay outside because no way I’d manage it anymore!

My DD was locked out of our rented house a few years back. Me and other DD were at work. DD1 had to get a wheelie bin up against the fence to enable her to climb over a high gate and get in a back door (fortunately had a back door key too). Glad it was petite, agile DD and not me because no way I'd have got up on that wheelie bin, let alone over the fence.

I'm loving this how to ace being a burglar thread.
My dad would climb the drain pipe and plop through a bathroom window. I would end up at anyone's house who would have me. A bit of doorstep sitting failing that. Mum's house was impossible to break in. She did have the plant pot key going on for a bit until it became too dodgy to leave it out, maybe end of the 90s.

But then…. What?😱