Do you lock your doors during the day when you are home?

I don’t during the day unless I’m out, but always at night. Actually, sometimes I forget, even at night, but the houses are close together in my neighborhood and my dogs are so loud that I tend not to worry.

I don’t lock doors but I always close the security door at the front of the house (it’s not locked). Doors at the back of the house are open.

I do lock the doors at night and I get a bit cranky if I wake up and my family has gone to bed leaving doors open and unlocked.

We have two dogs who bark but they’re getting very old and sometimes they sleep through arrivals until the person is at the door and their alert is delayed. However, I feel very safe here. I know break-ins are as likely to take place during the day when people are home, but I feel quite safe so I don’t lock up during the day. The idea that someone could come in while we sleep bothers me, so I prefer to make sure the house is locked up while we sleep.

No, i’m a locksmith by trade & I know a lot of people do, whatever makes you feel comfortable.

I do in this apartment, because my door tends to pop open when the main door to the building opens and closes. Otherwise, I wouldn’t; in past apartments I didn’t.

At night, yes. During the day, not unless I didn’t unlock them.

Nah, if you get out to my house, and get up the driveway you deserve to get in and get warm this time of year. It’s rough out here.

No. Not for years and years. My old house was secluded on 5 acres, dead end road, only 3 houses on my road and I had a ranch gate I could close. Never worried about a thing, doors and windows open all night in the summer.
The new home I am living in is on 10 acres with an electric ranch gate, no worries at all.

I have never locked my house in the 28 years I have lived here. No one would ever wander up either by accident or with malice aforethought.

My doors are locked day and night. Living in New York a person would be nuts to leave doors unlocked.

No. I have two large dogs that let me know about every sound they hear. I feel safe.

Yes.

Never. Do you know where my house keys are hidden? I don’t either.
The house is not locked even when on vacation.

Yes. Always! I only heard recently that there are people who don’t lock their doors. It really made me think about why I do it, and I still think that it’s more than just peace of mind. It seems logical that if someone really wants something, they can find other ways of getting in, but the lock’s there, so why not take advantage of it? I’ve witnessed people steal on the street more than once. Why wouldn’t they visit doorknobs to see if they lead inside? It’s even better than going into unlocked cars.
I wish everyone had specified the area that they live: rural, suburban, urban.

I couldn’t fall asleep at my grandfather’s house one night because he left the doors unlocked. The house is in the middle of nowhere but still I was so bothered that I got up when everyone was asleep and locked it.
[edit]: So to follow my own suggestion, I live in an urban area.

In my neighborhood there is little to no reason to lock my doors and have left the garage doors open all night many times. That said I do make sure the doors are locked when I leave the house to protect anyone foolish enough to enter my home while my Fox Hound Sadie is guarding my home while I am away. It would not be pretty what she would do to anyone not on the guest list.

Yup all the time,better safe than sorry.

I live in a safe area. When I’m not home, my house is open. When I’m home, it’s locked. I don’t remember if I always locked it when I was home, I think I did, but now that I have a child, I am very cautious when it comes to her safety.

I lock all doors pretty much all the time. There are a few exceptions, but extremely rare. Exceptions are sliding glass doors during the day, but I’m in the room where they are open. Windows are sometimes open during the day, but again I’m usually in the room.

Even my car doors I always make sure are locked when I’m out. Locked when I’m in the car and out. In my garage I don’t always lock my car doors. The door from the garage to the house is always locked.

I don’t feel overly paranoid, it’s just automatic. I have to remember to not lock a door if I need to leave it unlocked for some reason.

I’m rural. Doors are not locked during the day, but they are locked most nights.

We live just off a two-lane hwy and we have crazy meth heads in our county.

I live in a small town.

Bad people can wander through any town or city.

In the neighborhood where my boss lives there was just a rash of theft. Things stolen out of cars with the doors left unlocked. He said it was teenagers. I’m not sure how they know that. Maybe there was a witness? As far as I know they aren’t caught yet.

During the day my front door is open, but during the night it is closed and locked. It is summer here and very warm and muggy, especially at night. Luckily I have the kind of windows that open up completely. But I can’t close windows myself so one of my wonderful neighbours comes up when it is just dark and does that for me, it means I can lie here with the windows open for a couple of hours longer than I would otherwise, I would positively cook without their help.

Always. It is unusual here to find a house unlocked during the day. We are taught from very young age to always lock our door. For my safety, sure, but also as a habit. I’ll find it strange if I don’t lock my door.

By the way, the thieves are mostly robbing houses during the day.

No hahaha all the keys to my house have been long lost. We are the youngest family in this very nice neighbourhood, everyone else is in their 80s and have lived here since these houses were built.

I am shocked at how many of you leave your doors unlocked! I Don’t care how safe you think your town is crimes happen everywhere. So far you have all just been lucky. Lock your doors!

Or we’ve just decided we’re willing to take the risk.

The front door yes, but not the back door, which faces a fenced back yard I always keep locked.

@janbb good luck with that.

Yes, @BeenThereSaidThat , of course you’re right, the possibilities of crime exist everywhere, but we are adults here, able to assess fairly intelligently the threat levels in our own neighborhoods. If the conditions change, my attitude towards locking will likely also change.

Well I just hope none of you end up on the front page of your local newspaper.

Well, if I do, I’m hoping it will be for winning the Nobel Prize for Literature not for having my DVD player stolen!

Oh, good grief, @BeenThereSaidThat, you sound like my 90 year old mother. She also doesn’t really like getting into a car with automatic transmission. I take much greater risks every day by simply living in the world. I eat food in restaurants. I cross streets, trusting that motorists will obey the traffic laws. I survived cancer by trusting doctors to irradiate me and pump nasty toxins into my blood.

If it’s a local newspaper, I hope it’s because I got an award from the mayor for doing Good Works in the community.

I just asked this question about being on the front page of your newspaper:

http://www.fluther.com/178554/with-the-life-and-the-lifestyle-that-you-lead-now-what/

Personal insults for no.reason,just for giving my opinion. Time for me to log off for the day.

So you find a reference to my mother to be insulting? Well, humff! Now I’m insulted! :-P

@canidmajor Your mother probably wears combat boots too!

I pretty much always leave the doors unlocked if I’m the only one home, yeah. Sometimes if there’s more than one of us there, the door might stay unlocked during the day.

Either way, a house a couple streets down was robbed in the middle of the day because they had left a window open while they were gone. So if no one’s home, then I’m always careful about keeping everything closed and locked.

No. Not even when we go out of town for a week. Too many family members who might need access to the house, and nobody, not even I, have a key.

I’m with you @BeenThereSaidThat. If people decide to take the risk then fine. But, there are a whole bunch of people who believe nothing will happen, because nothing ever has happened. That is just silly talk. I do agree that some parts of the country are safer than others. We can prove it with statistics, but even people who live in crime areas (I don’t even mean high crime) often don’t lock their doors. I have no problem
With people choosing to lock their doors. I do have a problem with people criticizing those people who choose to lock their doors.

My employee’s daughter lived in pristine Boca Raton FL and wound up raped by a man who jumped into her unlocked passenger side door when she was leaving the Target parking lot. She went 35 years never raped while leaving her car doors unlocked while she drives. And, the friend if a friend of mine had her sliding glass door open as she slept in her second story apartment when I man climbed into her bedroom and raped her. She had made it many years without being hurt too. These are suburban, beautiful areas, with low crime, but not no crime.

@JLeslie: I never hear anyone (not just on this thread) critcize people for locking their doors (unless you mean me, up there, for being annoyed with @BeenThereSaidThat for being “shocked” that some of us don’t. But that wasn’t about her locking doors, it was about her attitude towards we who don’t always lock ours.)

We all just have different approaches to how we proiritize those things. Because of my loud dogs, my sense of threat is much lower than some. Because of my location, it’s higher than others.

Well…out here in hills and at my old home of 7 years, very few criminals are going to come through a ranch gate, ( this one has a gate code which makes it impossible to just open the gate manually ) especially knowing that everyone keeps guns living on rural properties, as well as having to get past a ranch dog and my goose “Marwyn” whose job for years was to goose any trespassers, especially the renegade packs of marauding Jehovahs Witnesses. Witness protection goose, we’ve got it all covered. Plus, there is only one way in and out on this little road, as well as at my old home. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, for long anyway. haha

@Coloma “Witness protection goose”

Ha! Fantastic.

@canidmajor Yes, you for telling us we are like your 90 year old mother and the many other people on older Q’s who think it sounds paranoid to lock everything all the time. This discussion has happened before.

I insist on the staff locking the portcullis & raising the drawbridge at 22:00 hrs each weekday evening, midnight on weekends to allow for guests not leaving by helicopter.

Ah, but @JLeslie , like I said, I was comparing her attitude “Well I just hope none of you end up on the front page of your local newspaper.” That sounds like my mother. Like I said, Lock, don’t lock, I don’t care, but assuming that we are all naive and unaware of our surroundings because we don’t behave like you is naive on your part. In fact, most here have explained why they (we) feel it’s OK to employ the level of security that we do.
I think it’s likely that you and I will never agree on things like this as we just have different ways of living. Your are more interested in implementing more methods of personal safety than I am, and that is going to be reflected in how we live. I am no less informed than you, I just choose to handle things another way.

@canidmajor I said I’m fine if people choose not to lock. I have a problem with people who don’t lock and brag about it or think nothing bad could ever happen. Especially if their reason is because nothing bad has ever happened before. Also, I’m not saying people are bragging simply because they don’t lock and stated it here, in only talking about people who don’t lock and think it’s paranoid to lock.

Some places are extremely unlikely to have break ins. I agree with that.

When my husband and I are at the race track we are the only ones who pick up our wallets in our truck. We have friends who think it’s ridiculous and say to us, “no one is going to take anything here.” Damned if I wasn’t talking to someone a while back who had their wallets stolen right out if their truck at Barber raceway in Alabama. They thought the same thing, no one there would steal anything. These same friends of mine thought I was a pain in the ass for taking down our canopies every night. Now they have lost two to bad weather and take theirs down to. I actually hate being right about these things, I just don’t want to be thought of as paranoid, a pain, nagging, controlling, etc.

I guess I have some baggage in the topic and similar.

About 5 years this area lost power when I was out of town. Knowing I have a sump pump my neighbor took it upon himself to go into my garage, find the generator and gasoline, start it, go into the house, find a 75 ft extension cord and hook it up to the sump pump.
Had the doors been locked I would have had a wet basement.

I love my neighbors.

My neighbor has a key and knows the codes. I’m not worried about my neighbor.

@JLeslie How does one brag about not locking their doors? The reason I’m asking is because on the other question similar to this one years ago, I stated that I didn’t lock during the day and someone accused me of bragging about it. It was a question, I gave my answer and was told I was bragging and I didn’t understand how they got that.

@chyna I think I have maybe sounded like I have been bragging over the years, but really, I think it is more about touting feeling safe in your environment. It’s a great feeling to go to bed at night in the summer with all the doors and windows open with zero fear, except maybe the fear of raccoons coming in the cat door if it wasn’t locked. haha
I seriously did not even know where my house keys were for about 7 years.

@chyna : I don’t get the “bragging” thing, either. Because I don’t worry as much about this thing doesn’t mean I don’t worry more about that thing. And circumstances and attitudes change. Why a stranger (who knows nothing about my circumstances) actually feels the need to cite scary stories I don’t understand. The chances are pretty good that we know what could happen. We see the news, we hear the stories, we make our own educated threat assessments based on the information we have, we make choices.

@canidmajor Agreed. It’s not any better to judge people who don’t lock their doors as foolhardy or uninformed than it is to judge people who do lock their doors as paranoid.

And I don’t really see this judgement on this thread… I just see people who think others are judging them.

For anyone tempted to think I am only happy to leave my doors windows open due to never having been burgled, I would like to add that I was burgled 21 years ago, while I was not at home, however the house was locked and windows closed at the time.

Only if I’m not going out or not expecting anyone otherwise I leave it unlocked until I’m in for the night.

@chyna It probably has more to do with my “baggage” in real life than anything that a jelly has said. I wrote here that I didn’t feel like just because someone stated in this Q they don’t lock that they are bragging. Canidmajor now clarified her 90 year old mother remark.

It’s not so much bragging, it’s really when people are saying I’m paranoid, nagging, crazy, bitchy, rolling their eyes. That’s what gets me. Also comments like, “I probably have more chance of being in a car crash, but I still drive every day,” in responses to someone who thinks it might be prudent to lock ones door, is implying the locker is overly hysterical.

If someone lives in a rural area and break-ins are one in twenty years I don’t blame them for not locking.

Always. We live in a pretty safe neighborhood, but it only takes one person to break into your house.

My entire adult life I have always had my doors locked, both in my car and home. I don’t understand taking the chance either. It doesn’t take much effort to lock a door.