Home Security

When it comes to home security, we all know how to keep our homes safe, as much as possible.

Burglar alarms, locks on our doors, our windows, timer lights; they are all things that we have in place and do without much thought.  When it comes to our outside spaces however, I know that I for one am a bit lackadaisical.

With that in mind I thought that I would share an odd little story with you today of what happened to us a few weeks ago.

We live in a Northern town at the top of a small cul de sac.  We are very lucky in that our bungalow is mostly surrounded by green space owned by the Water Board so looking out of the majority of our windows, you could believe that you lived in the country.

Our garage is a brick free standing space which is mostly used for storage now as we do not have a car now.  Everything from electrical appliances and our clothes dryer to the general junk that everyone stores in their garages.

Having lost the main garage door key ages ago, we have been relying on the back door to go in and out.  Being in an enclosed space with access only through a gate or over a high wall, we have never worried too much about security.  The key was frequently accidentally left in the lock and we often lost the key, only to find it later in a coat pocket.

A few weeks ago however the key went missing.  Coats were searched and the patio area were fully searched but to no avail.  Sure that the key would turn up at some point, but needing access to the garage, we decided to change the lock after a few days.

Now this is where the story gets weird.  Because the day after we changed the lock, the old key showed up.  Not in a coat pocket or a kitchen surface, but right outside our front door.  Not in a place that we could have overlooked, we would have literally had to step on the key to go outside.

This was very worrying to say the least.  That someone potentially had taken the key with a view to accessing the garage to steal or who knows what was a frightening prospect.  Especially we have previously always felt so safe here.

Having checked that nothing was stolen, we took some additional precautions.  There is now a security light on the gate so anyone trying to access our patio area at night will trigger it.  The back door to the garage now has our overfull garden bin next to it, not easy to move if you are trying to be quiet.

In addition, we located a replacement key service and now use the main garage door as our access point.

It just goes to show that you can never be too careful when it comes to security in and around your home.

What security improvements do you think you could work on?

*In collaboration with Fastkeys