You’ve Locked Yourself Out of Your House Now What?
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Home security is paramount for homeowners and as a result, we go through several steps to ensure our home is secured before leaving the house. Sometimes, however, we can be the victim of our security and find ourselves locked outand unable to get in for several reasons. For instance, you come home after a late night in the office and find you don’t have your keys with you or you leave in a rush to the supermarket and realise on your way back you don’t have your keys and you possibly locked the door with the keys dangling inside. Getting locked out is a common occurrence and may leave you feeling frustrated and anxious. Standing outside your door stranded is no fun.
A door lockout can be particularly problematic if it’s an inconvenient time of day or night when there is little help around or turn out to be serious if you have young children inside or have left any electrical appliances like an oven on.
Call for help: calling someone who can help you with your situation even at an inconvenient time of the night is your first option. If you live in an apartment, you may be able to ask the condominium manager for access to your unit. If you share your home with a family member, partner or roommate ask if they can come over to let you in. If you are renting your space then you have the option of calling your landlord for help – they will have a spare key to the place. If you have preempted a lockout situation and given a spare key to a friend or family member for safekeeping, you can call them for help. Some homeowners will leave a key with the babysitter or maid, in which case you can call them for help.
Look for unlocked windows or other doors: before calling for help, especially if it is in the middle of the night try out the back door or entrance through the garage door or even a window that you can push open from the outside. Take care as you push yourself in through a window, you don’t want an accident to add to our woes.
Pick your lock: if you haven’t lockpicked before or haven’t learnt the art by watching a movie then this option may be more difficult than it’s worth. For a spring bolt door lock, you can try using a hard plastic card – think credit card. For a regular lock, you will need paper clips or bobby pins.
Call a locksmith: calling a locksmith will be your last option but maybe your best if you don’t want to wrestle with your door lock with the fragile tools in the option above. They can be expensive but on the plus side, there will be a mobile locksmith available locally who can get to you within a short period to let you in. Mobile locksmiths usually operate 24×7.