Do you lock your door when you’re in the house?

[patienceandprudence]

Inspired by another thread (no prizes for guessing which).

I was surprised that people lock their doors sheen inside the house. Granted, we live in a small house, but it’s in a ‘bad’ area. We never lock our door when someone’s in, except at night if someone remembers. I’d say we leave it unlocked while out a good 30% of the time so if the kids come back or someone drops by to visit they don’t have to wait outside.

In my area this is the norm, and most of the time if you knock you’ll just be called in and told to walk right in next time. We tell anyone the same, even the regular delivery-people know that they can open the door and put the parcel in if it’s open.

Always lock mine when we are in, we have had someone walk in before, and MIL tells a story of when a man hunt was happening and the guy came in and asked if he could hide in her larder. She said no and he ran off but . There was also a terrible story of a lady who was beheaded in her own garden about 6 miles from us, so I’d not ever take that risk.

But my Nan used to leave here unlocked. She was from a very small village so it wasn’t such an issue. We live in London.

Always lock the front door when I'm in, the back door is usually ajar for the cat but I do live in a terrace with no access to the back (apart from through the house) other than down the back alley which has locked gates at either end, and through/over a high, padlocked gate.

Also, the house Alesha McPhail was abducted from was unlocked 💔

Locked to stop anyone walking in and meeting large protection dog. He’s always on duty day and night.

Every time! seen to many crime dramas. I go bat sh** crazy when friends leave theirs unlocked. I've got bog all worth pinching but its mine. I also would feel very very vulnerable.

Lock the door, but unless it’s a Yale type, leave the key in the door, especially at night, or else you will face a serious fire risk as you won’t be able to escape. It does mean that nobody can use their key to get in from the outside, but that’s a price worth paying for not getting incinerated imho.

Most of the time ours is locked. We have a porch door and we also lock that at night when we go to bed.

Front door yes. Back door no - but it’s open most of the time. But I have a big ass German shepherd who will tell me even if someone is near the back gate 😁. One very foolish Amazon man came right up to the back door once, tbh I’m not sure it was innocent so I’m very glad the dog was there (but also grateful the door was shut as the dog was NOT happy!)

Our front door locks automatically when it's shut

If it didn't I would make sure it was locked even when we are home

We in leafy green SE London suburbia

But there is def lots of crime going on, so it's one less thing to worry about, keeping the door locked when we're at home!

Apropos of nothing, I discovered recently that Chubb is one of our oldest British companies - established by Mr Chubb in the 1790s! The Georgians were understandably obsessed with locking their boxes, rooms, houses, depending on their social station. Being able to lock away your personal possessions, however meagre, was super important.

Never. But I live in a (very) rural area and have 6 dogs.
When I bought my house 20 years ago the previous owners had no keys to any of the doors so it couldn’t be locked at all!

Yes always.
We live in the back of the house so the front door is always locked (unless in use obviously).
The french doors in the lounge are unlocked as long as someone is in the room (the dog regularly wants to go out). If we are leaving the room for longer than it takes to make a brew, or going upstairs, we lock it.

I lock the house at all times. Even if I am upstairs or in the back garden. Opportunist thieves can walk in snatch carkeys etc. enabling them to steal a lot of prized possessions. If you leave your house unsecured while you're out doesn't that invalidate your house insurance?

Always. As soon as I get in, I lock the door behind me. I live alone and in an area where my neighbours leave their doors unlocked, even when out, but I'm not taking any risks.

Always, and when I have visitors or workmen in I have a security lever that I point out and push across and ask them to do the same any time they come back in if going out for tools etc.

Our road (leafy etc etc) has a community WhatsApp group and people regularly post cctv clips of ne’er-do-wells wandering along the pavement trying out the car doors - also miscreants loitering in driveways. I suspect we would all be much better off not seeing all this and being in blissful ignorance like the old days.

If we are all in the house then doors usually locked. If one of us popped to the shops and others are in then we will leave the door unlocked.

In the thread you are talking about I wouldn't have locked the door on my dh.

Mind, dh and ds are always locking me out by locking door and leaving key in!

Yes, it's always locked.

We used to keep our door unlocked but then there was a spate of burglaries in the middle of the night where people just lied in to people’s houses so we started locking it - and then recently we had an attempted burglary so now I double lock everything. Before that I was very happy to have the door open and visitors just come in

My DH is always leaving car keys, phones, watches etc lying around and I’m forever squirrelling them away into a safe place. I even hide my laptop in the blanket box when I go out, just in case.

We’ve had a spate of nighttime burglaries too. That freaks me out a bit - the idea of people brazen enough to creep around your house while you are asleep. Some people - called ‘creepers’ - actually get a sexual thrill from doing this. Horrid.

I also lock my door to stop MIL walking in "whenever she feels like it". Also in my area we had an incident where after an armed robbery in a shop in the next district the violent thief had gone to ground in our area. The Police put out a warning on local radio to shut, lock doors and windows and stay inside while they searched for him! (Tracker dogs and Helicopter nabbed him about an hour later!)

Eh, we don't bother. There's not really crime here. (Obviously there's still domestic violence, but not stranger crime.)

It's safe where we live.

Doors locked unless someone is in garden.

Why would you not lock your door? (Unless you want entry to your home to be a free for all)