Poll-Do you lock the door between your house and garage?

Yes it is locked. I only unlock it for a long period of time when I’m unloading groceries or doing laundry. We don’t have a laundry room, our washer and dryer are in the garage.

Someone broke into our garage when I was out walking the dog. I knew they had gotten in because we always keep the actual garage door closed unless we are driving in or out and when I got home it was wide open. They would have gotten away with so much more stuff if they had full access to my home via the garage.

I guess I should have checked other -

It’s always locked at night and when we aren’t home (not just when we go out of town, but anytime we leave the house).

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t lock doors. It’s an easy, fast extra layer of protection. Why wouldn’t you use it?

I lock it at night before bed, and unlock it as I leave in the morning. I need to get it re-keyed because it's gotten gunked up on the garage side and the key wont go in anymore. Actually I want to get a new knob that has the keypad entry with different codes you can assign people. And you can issue one time codes from an app, etc.

I picked "never", because I never lock it or check that it is locked.

However, DH & DS will always lock it at night and DS always locks it whenever he leaves the house if no one else is home. It drives me batty to come in through the garage with an armful of groceries to find it locked.

I am a definite door locker.  I even lock myself out of the house when I am doing a lot of yard work.  I just can’t feel comfortable leaving myself vulnerable to someone slipping inside while I am around the corner of the house working on something.  I have to go back and lock the door when I am out getting the mail and a neighbor waves for me to come see something in their home.  If my eyes are not on the front of my house, the door is locked.

There have been times that my garage door went up without me opening it. I figure someone somewhere is operating something that signals my garage opener.  How can you not lock the door to your home after something like that happens?

I know a lot of this comes from being a single mom for so many years and wanting to keep my son safe. But I know that the main reason is because someone entered my grandmother’s home through an unlocked side door, raped and murdered her.  She was living alone after my grandfather died and was the sweetest, most gentle woman.  I remember the joy with which she would always greet us, taking our faces in her hands and smothering us with kisses. Once something like that occurs in your life, you never feel quite safe again.  

I was young when this happened, and I had this fear that the man that hurt her would find us too. My grandmother had pictures of all the families - her many children and all the grands on her bedroom dresser.  We were told that the murderer lay all the pictures face down on the dresser as if he didn’t want to be watched in what he was doing to our sweet grandma. 

So, I’ve become a lifelong door locker. 

We have an attached garage, but no door from the garage to the house. All our other doors are locked even when we are home-and the front is dead-bolted at night, with security screens locked and bolted also. The garage is locked also.

Always. We're door lockers. If we walk through a door and aren't going back out fairly immediately (within 15 minutes or so), it gets locked.

For me it's easier just to have the habit on all doors than to remember to only lock at night, only lock certain doors, etc.

It would help if I had a garage.

We don't have a garage. We only lock the front/back doors at night when we're going to bed.

Other - we don't have an attached garage because I insisted on detached only. DMIL never locks the house/garage door, and she usually leaves the garage door up all day long. DH is a lot like her, and I knew he didn't think it was important - AND he's the last one going to bed most nights, so no attached garage for us. As it is, he often leaves the garage door open all day long if he's home. I keep it closed, because he's got a lot of valuable tools & so forth in there and I don't think people need to be able to see whether there's anything in there worth breaking in for.

This is one of those things I know we SHOULD do but we just don't. We live in a very safe neighborhood but I am under no illusion that crime does not happen here. I console myself with the fact that we have two big dog who notify us loudly and repeatedly of every person, animal, twig, moving branch, etc. outside of our house. Their hearing is amazing.

Were they caught and convicted?  They never made an arrest in my grandmother’s murder, but it was thought that the gardner’s son killed her.  He had left the country by the time the police went looking for him.  This was well before dna was around, and I don’t know whether or not they ever collected anything of evidentiary value at the scene.  A few years ago, my younger sister mentioned that my older sister was pushing the police to have the case reopened again.  I have no idea whether or not they have done so.

Same.