You know how it always seems you can’t get a hold of your keys? Somehow they just find their way out of your pocket or your wallet or you just can’t recall where you left them. If they were smart or connected to your phone in any way, it’d be easy to have it beep or track it to somewhere in your house or outside where the garbage can is. However, your keys are still just items that need tending to else you’d be locked out of your house on a Friday night by 2 am because you just returned from the club and can’t seem to recall anything amidst the hype. So if you ever lose your keys, all hope isn’t lost, at least not yet. You’d be frustrated for a bit but there are ways to get around it and we’re about to find out.
First of all, losing your house keys isn’t something anyone wants. Usually, it is better to prevent some ills rather than look for reactive measures once something happens so here are ways to make sure you are never locked out of your house.
- Make a spare and keep them either at home or at your office. You can never be too safe. If you’re prone or given to losing keys, it is advisable to make as many possible spare keys as possible. You know all the flower pots and thick lawns you have outside your house? Use them. Better still put a spare key in your mailbox outside your home. This way you’d never get locked out.
- You could give a spare to your spouse or your neighbor. Some people are usually skeptical about this because they don’t really trust their neighbors. You’d have to make sure though that they are not the type to go snooping around your house when you’re not in just because they have a key.
- You could move past the age of the key and get a combination lock so you’d not have to worry about keeping keys safe. This could come in handy where you have a nick for misplacing keys. This is probably the safest bet considering you wouldn’t have to worry about keys. You could also resort to smart locks where you could use your phone to open your house, this is way cooler and also helps you to ditch keys.
- Use smart trackers. These usually look like a Keychain and can be connected with your smartphone. This will tell you when your keyset is far away from you and will give you GPS as to its location. This is for the people who seem to have a tough time keeping keys together.
- Insurance. You could include lost keys in your insurance policy for your house so you don’t get to pay a locksmith to change your locks or have them rekeyed when you lose your keys. This will take the monetary burden off you.
These are all preventive measures but where all of these do not come into play and you have lost the only keys to your house, here are some options that may be availableto you.
Find Alternate options
When you’re in front of your house in the middle of the night and can’t seem to find your keys, the first point of call is to find alternate means to enter your house. Yes, it will probably seem like you’re snooping around and you’ll look like you want to break into someone’s home but you need to find alternatives. If you can’t seem
to locate another means into the house and all the doors and windows are locked as they should be, then you probably should look for spare keys. Usually, people leave outlets for spare keys in places like under the flower pot in front of the house or under a slab. If you still can’t find a way in, then you’d resort to calling in the cavalry and this means the locksmiths.
Call your insurance company
Sometimes replacing your locks can be very expensive when you lose your keys especially for some kind of locks that would require a signature before installation. If you have an insurance cover on the house, you could call up your insurance company and have them cover for the replacements. This would take the burden off you. Where you don’t have such insurance cover, try exploring other means.
Replace
Sometimes it’s better new right? Some broken things are better off replaced than repaired. So you could have the lock picked and opened by a locksmith but if you’re feeling that it would grant them undue access to your home, you could just have the lock replaced. Usually, locksmiths who have emergency services work around the clock and can show up under the specified time so you would not have to wait so long. Like every other art, the locksmiths would explain to you if you need to change the locks completely or just tweak the cylinders so another set of keys could open it. You’d have a range of options from lock repairs to lock installations to replacements or tweaking the cylinders which are also known as rekeying. All these will be properly explained so you’d choose which best suits you. Sometimes a very skilled locksmith can even make you a fresh set of keys without a sample as some of them have perfected the art of cutting keys by hand and not necessarily waiting for samples. All they’d need are their tools as some keys that are easily replaceable while some others need way more than a locksmith.
Do you have spare keys?
Losing your house keys could be easier when you have spare keys with your neighbour or spouse as the keys would help you gain access into your home. However, the problem with using spare keys is the fact that they cannot guarantee your safety. Yes, you now have access to your home but you can’t live with the thought of not knowing what exactly happened to the missing ones. So when deciding whether to change your locks, you’d need to consider if using your spare keys is good enough or if you need to change them. Be sure to pick the option that makes you sleep well at night. From the above factors already listed out, it is safe to say that it isn’t a one-way trip. Changing your locks solely depends on the circumstances with which you find yourself. You would need to consider a lot of things and weigh their importance before making a decision.
You could say that the chances of having a burglar in your home as a result of your lost keys are minute but it is better to be safe and have your locks changed than be sorry you didn’t. Sometimes losing your keys could be a blessing in disguise and at other times it could just be plain frustrating. Either way, be sure to put your safety and security first amidst other factors.
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