apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm supremely paranoid about someone finding my spare key - (down the hall in the fire extinguisher enclosure, behind the pipe / radiator / atop the elevator frame are sufficiently obvious places that you learn them in, e.g. EMT and firefighting classes) - so I honestly went and put one in a baggie in a film canister and stuck it deep in the mulch in the park shared by my building and many others...Security through obscurity can have its place!

My front door makes it impossible to be locked out.

However I have been day dreaming about rfid locks.

I keep a set of spares for everything in a safty deposit box at the bank.

Off topic
I love the key used in the graphic for this article - where is it from? =)

I don't even have a second set. I need keys to lock the doors on the way out, so forgetting them is not possible. As for loss, the mngt company posts a $100 fee, but the super lives across the hall and is well-tipped at Christmas. He'd probably get me a new set cut while I was at work if mine were lost.

You're supposed to tip your super...? What about your manager??

After getting locked out on the weekend with literally no way of getting to my spare keys in my apartment or getting a set form my landlord...I said NEVER AGAIN!

I have one set hidden outside of my apartment, just in guess I realize while I am in the hood and....

And a full set at work, all the way on the other side of the city. Luckily, I work at a hospital with 24 hour access. Sure going all the way to work by muni/taxi is no fun but way better than calling a locksmith, waiting around forever and paying thru the nose.

Friends with copies works as well, but they never seem to be home when you need them.

And yes I have had to go back to work twice in 1 year hahaha.

PS. HERE IS A TIP: On the keys, I hide outside of my apartment, I write a fake address on them, on the outside chance someone finds them and has way too much time/motivation figure what door the key opens on my block.

A hidden key also comes in handy when you're 100 miles away from home and you suddenly remember you left the front window open. On more than one occasion, I've had a friend use the spare key to get in and close the window.

The graphic is most like from a site selling antiques. That would be my guess.

I have a spare in my wallet just in case. Of course if I lose my wallet I'm super compromised, and if I forget both my keys and my wallet...

These look attractive at some level since if you forgot a key you'd be able to get back in. I wonder how secure/reliable they are.

http://tinyurl.com/27uyuk
http://tinyurl.com/33hn57


Before the code crackers out there chime in - any keyed lock can be picked in just a few seconds - no lock will keep out a determined thief, I totally realize that.

My best friend has my spare keys, but she is a very busy mom/foster mom of six, and can't find the durn thing half the time! (Drives me crazy - I have to start pestering her to find it WEEKS before I want her to feed the cats or something.) I never thought to keep another key elsewhere.

BUT, I grew up as a latchkey kid in a "family" building run by a very, very, very mean building manager. I'm not sure why anyone who hated kids so much would manage a family building as long as he did, but anyway, I was "scared straight" around the whole getting locked out thing, just from the experience of having to ask Mr. Meaniepants for help.

For example, I've lived in my current apartment for 10 years and I've only ever locked myself out twice. ;)

I was amazed to learn how many people don't know about the little button under the latch (on the side) that allows you to change the lockset from auto lock to open. Then you always have to use the keys to lock up when you leave.

I must have shown this button to at least four people in the past 6 months! The only way I can be locked out is if I get all the way out the front door of the building without keys in hand. Still, it has happened...usually when I'm taking out the garbage.

For our vacation home we have one of those cheap key lock boxes mounted on the wall next to the door. We figure the key is safe enough from someone stealing it and using it to get in since a real burglar would just break a window anyway.

For our home in the city we have a call box at the front door. Visitors are supposed to scroll to our name to call us and we push #9 to unlock. To make things easy on ourselves we had the management company put our cell phones in there rather than a home phone. When we forget our keys we just call ourselves from the box and let ourselves in! Now all we need to do is find a safe place to hide a key to our actual apartment... We've been trying to figure out a safe place to hide it for almost a year, so far without much luck. Thankfully we share a roof deck with our neighbors and the one time we did get locked out they let us cut through their apartment and come through the deck.

Most locksets for apartment entry doors have two buttons on the door edge, just below the latch and deadbolt, which enable or disable the latch lock. Disabling the latch lock prevents automatic locking when the door shuts thereby preventing accidental lock-outs. After disabling the latch lock you simply lock your apartment with the deadbolt lock only. If you don't have this configuration on your door, you may want to consider changing your lock mechanism to this type or a deadbolt-only system to prevent lock-outs.

You might not want to use the button to keep the door from locking automatically. But what you can do when you're running out into the hallway after the cat is to lock the deadbolt while the door is open. The door can't close and so you can't get locked out.

I went away on vacation and gave my keys to a friend who was supposed to pick me up at the airport upon my return. Needless to say, my flight was terribly delayed (at least 3 hrs), and she got frustrated waiting and left. When I phoned her I got no answer and decided to take the train home. When I got home, I tossed my luggage in the backyard and trekked over to work where I keep the spare keys. It's only two blocks down and two blocks over -- a prison -- they're open 24 hours a day, if I did not have spares there, I probably would have spent the night there in my office!

I used to work in an office to which I had secure access 24 hours. I always kept a key hidden there.

Doug - me too. Except what if you keep your badge in your car and lock yourself out of both car and home. Just saying... ;->

So nobody has used anythng like these or heard anything good or bad about them? I'm tempted to replace my deadbolt with one.

http://tinyurl.com/27uyuk
http://tinyurl.com/33hn57

To the RealCMJ - You're a genius, my friend. I will be changing my phone entry system to go to my cell phone ASAP. Thanks for the tip - never occurred to me!

Luckily I have doormen so I don't have to worry about getting locked out (well it's not by luck - never getting locked out is one of the reason I chose to live in a doorman building). But my parents in Asia have a number pad lock and I absolutely love it.

Shelter Life Alex, you remind me of the time a careless friend locked himself out of his building while taking out the trash wearing nothing but boxers and flipflops. Without any cash or ID, he had to hop the turnstile and take the subway up to a friend's house who had his spares! Fun times. . .

As for me, my sister (who has a 24-hour doorman with constant access to her place) has my keys in a place where either of us can find them, and she lives walking distance away. There's also the president of my condo board, who has a master key, and of course the super. So I should be pretty safe - or not, depending on how you look at it!

I'd like to add to Sarah's off topic comment. Where is that key from? I love it!

Boomer - the way I read that, key use is optional? I'd love it, since I hate having a bunch of keys. On the other hand, I'd probably hate it since I seem to be afflicted with a severe case of CRS lately..

I have my key over my neighbors door. She has her key over mine. I figured nobody would take the key over my door and go down the hall trying doors to find the one it opens.

Put a key on the cat's collar instead of tags or a bell.

Check out this keyless option:

http://www.ground-z.org/electronics/home/fingerprint-lock.html

It's not cheap, but it solves the problem.

I've hidden a laundry room key out in the yard, and a copy of the key to my front door is hidden somewhere the laundry room...

;)

After forgetting my keys inside my appartment once, I decided to hang them at the front door, so that I couldn't leave the appartment without seeing them. It never happened again.

I have a good being locked out story...I was in my bathing suit because I was going to use our building's pool, but I was multitasking by doing laundry (on the same floor) at the same time. Well, suffice to say, I locked myself out. I had no extra key hidden, no phone, no money. I knock on my neighbors' doors--no one answers. So, I go up to the pool and ask the one woman up there if I could use her phone. It turns out that she's visiting (this was when I lived in a kind of vacationy area). But, she was kind enough to take me to the condo she was renting and let me use her cell phone to call my landlord. Turns out, he didn't have a key. He did call a locksmith, though, who was supposed to come in an hour. I decide, what the heck, I'll take a dip, and then get back in my apartment and everything will be great. Not so much...the guys came something like 4 hours later. And, because I didn't know that, I was waiting outside for them in my damp bathing suit...and I didn't have a phone to call them either. Miserable! Fortunately, someone in the building had left books for people to take, so at least I could entertain myself.

You'd think I'd learn, but I still don't have an extra set. Fortunately, I at least have my laundry inside my apartment and no pool!

I don't lock my door. I decided that if someone wants in, he'll find a way in. I do this with my car as well -- I don't want someone breaking my damn window just to steal the maps out of my glovebox. And yes, I live in the city -- Houston, to be exact. It probably doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.

It's true that a determined burglar who wants your specific belongings will not be deterred by basic apartment locks, but a bunch of kids who just want an easy source of fence-able items so they can buy their next hit will skip a locked door in favor of trying for an unlocked one.

mycatsownme --

That is one *awesome* lock. I definately want one. Don't want to pay that money for it but I definately want one!

That would get your place broken into for sure though! ;->

mamacita - LOCK YOUR DOORS. You could wake up dead if you don't. Seriously. An awful lot of creeps out there victimize women who don't lock doors. They won't break in, they go for easy targets. *Please* be careful...

There are tons and tons of crimes of opportunity of criminals who check on doors and windows just to see if they're unlocked, if not they move on and rob/rape/kill the next unlocked door or window.

Ever hear of the Richard Trenton Chase?

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/chase/murders_4.html

He said that he went down the streets testing doors to find one that was unlocked. “If the door was locked,” he said, “That means you’re not welcome.”

@mycatsownme --

The problem is that your fingers leave residue on the locks, and someone can come along and put a large Gummi Bear on the reader, and there will be enough residue left that it will probably read as okay and unlock the door.

You really, really don't want to be using these kinds of mechanisms unless they are in addition to some other physical locking mechanism.

@boomer --

See my comments on the AT thread over at http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/security/slimline-keysafe-024793.

In short, the combination door locks that the US military and the US government think are sufficient for use in classified environments can be broken into in just minutes (I did it while I was working in the Pentagon, for good reason). The residential grade units are even worse.

Your best bet for security is a good Medeco or Mul-T-Lock deadbolt that is ANSI Grade 1 certified, and UL437 listed, and has features designed in to preven the "Bump Key" attack. See also my comments on the thread over at http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/security/the-unbumpable-and-self-rekeying-deadbolt-from-kwikset-044955.