To change the locks?

[TheWorstWeek]

I've searched high and low for my house key to our front door. I know I had it last night when DH came home from work because I let him in the house but this morning it wasn't where we keep it (away from the front door) and it wasn't in the door. DC promise they haven't taken it. I've searched pockets, shoes, under things, behind furniture... Absolutely everywhere I can think of and it's disappeared.

Normally I make sure the key is out the front door every single night but I was exhausted last night after having a migraine all day so I don't actually remember checking that I did. So now I've got it in my head that someone has reached in through the letterbox and taken my key and plans to use it at some other time. Obviously that's freaked me out - even if it's unlikely that the ONE time I leave the key in the door it's stolen.

WIBU to just call a locksmith and see if they can change the locks tonight? Not knowing where my key is makes me feel very unsafe in my own home.

If you can't get a locksmith, then I'd make some other arrangement to make it safer. Not that I think someone has taken the key and is just waiting to pounce; but you'll not rest, and no one deserves that much stress before Christmas.

Set up some tin cups balanced on the handle, or posey up a chair under the handle etc. 🤔

That's a good idea.

I know it would be incredibly unlucky for the one time I might have left the key in the door that someone steals it but now that I've got that idea in my head, I can't get it out. Feels very unsafe just to shrug off my missing key.

So annoyed at myself.

yeah you'll not rest until you've secured it somehow!

I remember once my car keys got mislaid (back years ago, young and new to car ownership) and I was convinced it would be stolen, ended up chaining the car to a grid!

@toomuchfaff need a diagram I cannot picture chaining a car to a grid?! do you work for gchq?!

(Wobbles off to look at car in garage and ponder)

To do that would mean your house would be specifically targeted, a contraption used to get it out, not an easy feat just by hand by a random chance I imagine? I would keep looking, when this has happened to us before we've usually found it somewhere. If it worries you do by all means get new locks but as we have a porch door we put a key in the lock to ensure no one could get in and main house door was secure. Also cctv outside and an inside camera with motion alarm. X

Can you not leave it on the chain or deadbolt it until you have had a bit more chance to search around ?

It may well turn up down the back of the sofa, in someones shoe near the front door etc. and it seems unlikely that the one night you left it in would be the night someone tried to steal it. Unless that is common round your area and you have people trying the doors on a regular basis.

the road grid at the side of the carriageway, a big mahoosive chain think about 2 5m, and i chained the grid to the underside of the car, about midway I think it was the exhaust.. the car wasn't moving... I lived in a rough area, the car keys had been stolen in a break in a few weeks earlier, then the car had been taken and since returned to us by police minus the keys, the thief still had the keys, and knew where the car was, I was massively paranoid it'd be nicked again. Worked though, they didn't get it! I did however get a notice from the council to remove the chain hahaha apparently ypu can't chain things to the grid... who knew

@toomuchfaff brilliant! I would have just removed a spark plug or the battery!

ahhhh

Well I was 22 and knew nothing about cars, that'd been Sooooo much easier hahaha

@toomuchfaff mine may have been more subtle- yours definitely screamed “bugger off I know who you are and what you want, but I am not going down without a fight”
mine would be more of a whimpered “please don’t take it”.

Well I'm certainly glad you went to the trouble of registering on a primarily UK-based website to resurrect a two year old thread and advertise a Toronto locksmith!