AIBU to think I should be able to leave things in my garden without them being stolen?

[StarTravels]

Just that really.

Perhaps foolishly I left two 8 litre Kilner drinks dispensers in my garden, along with some small halloween decorations and some bottles of beer. I left them overnight as I was part way clearing up following a party. They were stacked up right next to my back door in my gated garden. The kitchen window looks out directly onto it and you can't easily see it. Someone has walked in from the street and somehow managed to clear off with all of it. I'm impressed they could carry it all to be honest. I'm guessing more than one person was involved. I would have been less annoyed if they had just taken the beer, but to actually steal my kilner dispensers and some glass decorations seems a step too far.

Was I BU to think I could safely leave this overnight without someone walking in and just taking it?!

DH is refitting our bathroom and put the old basin outside in the front garden beside the house. A bit later he popped out to check which side the cold tap was on and the basin had gone. They didn't take the pedestal .

Where I come from (up north), we have a saying: 'You don't shit on your own doorstep'...

Whenever something gets nicked from someone else's house/garden, the their will usually be found and beaten up.

These stories are awful! I think I've just been very lucky.

I've never done it myself but there's a definite opinion round where I live that if something is in the front garden, it's unwanted and left there because the owner wants it taking away by someone... Like freecycle. I'm wondering if that's what happened to your wash basin Indantherene

I'm in Ireland and, during a funeral, you have to have someone in the deceased's house so it doesn't get broken into. Thieves check the RIP website for details. Thoroughly depressing.

When we moved into our flat, we left the pushchair downstairs for an hour, in the communal hallway. There were other pushchairs so I wasn't worried. Someone took two baby blankets... Come on, stealing from a baby??

A few years ago my parents street and surrounding area had all the hanging baskets/pots/planters taken out of front gardens. All freshly planted at beginning of summer. Police said they must've had one person driving a van while a couple of others chucked the stuff in the back.

When I lived in a flat, I took the baby and toddler up the stairs to DP, returned to get the pushchair, no more than a couple of minutes had passed. Pushchair had been nicked

CM had her stinky trainers nicked off her front step. Some people are bizarre!

When I grew up we lived on acres. We used to find people climbing the fence to have a good wander round. They also often liked to have a little picnic!!! I threw of several lots who screamed blue murder or said they had the owners permission!!! They certainly did not the brazen check of some used to amaze me. My favourite confrontation was with A group of older ladies who wanted some Fresh oranges to make marmalade and they thought they would help themselves to ours for free!!!! That was fun!!!

I spent this year patiently cultivating a tomato plant outside my front door (I usually kill any plants stone dead, possibly just by looking at them ) anyway it started growing two tiny tomatoes...I was very excited and planned to use them on my DDs birthday pizza...the day before some fucker nicked the plant

Mind you, I had led battery tealights on the doorstop for Halllween and someone pinched these too...

Sorry for everyone on this thread who has had stuff stolen, it's awful isn't it. Mine are very small compared to some of these.

About two months ago my Mum got up, got ready to go out, locked the front door, walked to the gate and discovered some fecker had stolen her front garden wall in the night.

Apparently it's quite common with rogue builders needing older bricks to match up when doing loft conversions, extensions, etc, they target a street that has the bricks they need and clear it out.

Someone stole my bird feeder once. It was nailed to my shed door.
And I live in a naice area.

These stories are shocking, sorry to all the victims of burglary.. I bet it feels awful. They have no conscience! I must have been very lucky in 30 years not to have been robbed, same with all my family. Lived in nice areas, poor student areas and now live next to an estate. Infact it's the opposite problem now, we leave stuff in the garden for the gypos to take and they don't seem to want it anymore!

Sadly, I need to proof read before posting. I had two bottles of DIET COKE removed from my car. Clearly, two bottles of Diet Come would just be plain disgusting and probably take more time than I left on this earth to fill.

TwoWrongs, My friend was airing her daughter's very expensive Nike trainer's on her bedroom windowsill and they were nicked straight away!

My mother has a very heavy bird bath in her back garden. People always come and try and steal it, find the bath bit is too heavy and the pedestal concreted into the ground, so give up, and leave the bath bit on the ground. She has also had plants in pots stolen.

Where I grew up, we had a huge garden with an orchard at the back. We came home one afternoon, having been out shopping, to find a family picking all of our fruit! Apples, plums, pears, damsons. And they had the cheek to argue the toss about it, saying they had always come round to pick the fruit. They weren't just picking the fruit, they were stripping the trees! My father put up a fence at that point, with a gate that locked, to stop people walking through.

It's generally a very low crime rate round here, but last year some bastards nicked my filthy, leaky dog-shitty wellies from off my front porch step. There was a reason they were not inside the house!

My parents recently had a large concrete planter and two rose bushes pinched from their back garden overnight. The thieves lifted them over the back fence.

I used to go tree planting with a local conservation group and it was common for thieves to clock us planting then nip back and steal all the little trees overnight. They were apparently being sold on at the local Sunday carboot.

My broken old tumble dryer is parked outside my front door waiting for robbing bastards to take it away, but it's been there over a fortnight now with not as much of a sniff of thievery .

My recycling bin has been stolen quite a few times. The crazy thing is that the council provides them for free. Why would someone steal it?

We use to have two burglars live near us, they were pretty distinctive (one had a limb missing ) and were particularly shit at robbing as they always got spotted and identified easily (small town ), they were horrible people and we were so glad when they were arrested and imprisoned.

We gutted our bathroom when we moved in and it still had the original bath in (1930's house). It weighed a ton and took three strong men a good effort to get it down the stairs. It took them ages and the weight caused a few choice words.

They left it just outside front whilst they fitted new bath. I went outside 10 minutes later and it's gone! To this day I'm amazed someone took it do quickly and quietly and not one person heard them! You'd have needed at least three to shift it.

Someone took my retractable washing line when we were on holiday.
It was screwed to the fence as well.

My friend has had wheelie bin nicked, washing line, a row of freshly planted trees! Also she came home and found all her drawers rifled through, someone had broken in to look for her spare car keys as she and bf had expensive cars. They didn't find them.. and weirdly didn't take any of the expensive gadgets lying around.

This thread reminds me of when I met my DH - we grew up in very different areas. Shortly after we met he was staying at his parents' house while they were visiting relatives and we met at their house prior to a night out.

In the taxi he said "shit I left the washing out we need to go back" I asked why, as it didn't look like it would rain, to which he started laughing and said "no, the clothes will get nicked!"

Pizza places wouldn't even deliver around there as they were sick of the drivers getting mugged. I don't think it's changed, in fact it's probably worse.

I live in a ha development at the e d of a big new build village type estate. Dd has left her scooter in front garden for nearly a year and it's never been touched.

At the old house we had a wheelbarrow with a flat tyre and a hole in it nicked.

When I was a kid, we went off on holiday, as you do. When we came back, DF decided it was time to harvest the potatoes he had planted in the back garden. Some sod had come in, taken the potatoes, and put the shaws back in the ground! Okay, you could access the back garden from the school playground (it was the head teacher's house) and the bolt there was a tad suspect, but otherwise the garden was enclosed with enormous walls, some of them 12ft high! DF never got over it.