We don't get many people stop at our house. Hubby will go out, but I won't. I sure miss having a big dog like we used to have. I posted signs "No Jehovah Witnesses" at the end of our driveway and on both doors so they don't bother us anymore.

I'm not afraid someone will break in. Two dogs, one pretty big, barking their heads off. Today it was the mailman, to deliver a certified letter. Now I have to go to the post office tomorrow to sign for it.

nickel, that's a bit alarming to me that you judge your safety by the appearance or behavior of a stranger. And a very large percentage of criminal activity occurs in the broad daylight.

I simply do not think that a door to a residence should be opened routinely to strangers.

I'll answer it.

If it isn't someone I know will be coming, at the old place, it's usually been the Jehovah's Witnesses or the folks doing the volunteer fire fighter drive. No one else deals with the steep driveway at my old house. The first I take the pamphlet and scurry them out (and throw the pamphlet in the recycle bin). The second I donate to.

In my new place, very very rural, it was someone who dropped by who was interested in seeing my new chickens, and had advice for me. I welcomed her in (I'd talked to her around town before.) The only real strangers dropping by this new home were involved with the power company, construction or whatever.

I'm prepared to open my door a crack if I think it adviseable… and to slam it shut if need be. No dogs, but I am six feet tall and 200 pounds so I think I can slam it effectively.

I usually do. It's frequently Jehovas Witness (we have a lot of them here) but lately it's people trying to get us to vote. Sometimes it's my neighbours, on the rare occasion it's a friend.

I'm out in the county, and have audible alerts on the driveway and security cameras. If I see someone pulling down the driveway, I don't wait for them to come to the door, I go outside and stand on the porch and watch them. There have only been a couple of occasions where the person tried to back their way up the driveway (difficult in a regular car) or did a five-point turn around to drive forward up the driveway, without getting out to talk to me. In both those cases, I felt it was someone untrustworthy or why not hollar out, "made a wrong turn, sorry!" or something like that.

Where I live I rarely have unannounced visitors. Our friends would call ahead to make sure it is worth the drive. Our closet neighbor would call/text first, so I am careful about it but it usually is only meat sales people and they usually go away when they hear our dogs.

I would be scared to answer out here to a stranger. i normally , if it happens say my dogs don't like strangers

I talk through the door until I know who it is. In my area, bad people knock to see if you are home, and if no one answers, they break in. Some people use the Ring doorbell. You can answer remotely.

this week someone knocked saying he was looking for work spraying for ants. I said no thanks. Was that what was he really doing or checking to see if someone was home? There were no cars parked outside the house. Sad to be so suspicious.

I agree with Nickel. I think a lot depends upon the area in which we live, and there is a wide variety here. Don't get me wrong; I'm cautious. But not overly so because of where I live. Yes, there are crimes here but I feel mostly safe; I look first to see who is there but even if I don't know them I do answer it. Call me crazy.

But, as I said, I think a lot depends upon location and area.

Ted Bundy wasn't odd looking. He was quite handsome. Look what he did.

I always answer the door. I don't know where you all live, but I've never had a problem. I do have sidelights and can see who is there. It's usually the mailman or a delivery man who needs me to sign for a package, or a neighbor or school children selling band candy or some such thing. I live in a safe neighborhood and have done so now for 34 years - no problems. I also don't have caller ID so I answer my phone. Yes, it IS annoying to get all those junk phone calls, but on the one phone I have with caller ID, they usually spoof a local or familiar number anyway.

If it's the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons I thank them politely and tell them I'm quite happy with my own religion.

Matthias, your post made me smile and warmed my heart. Children asking for a drink as they lug groceries home. I remember back in the early 60's I was one of those kids. I'd go to the corner grocery just a block up the street but always had to stop at the elderly couples home on my way back home, I'd knock on the door and ask could I please have a drink Mrs Jelly. Than she and her husband would usher me into their sunny yellow kitchen for iced tea and cookies. LOL... Thank you Matthias for bring back a lovely memory.

Nope. My mother taught me well, “hit the deck!” she would hiss. We live way out in the country down a long one-lane wooded drive and I’m home alone a fair amount. Nobody has any business dropping by without calling first. We have at least 5 signs up for no trespassing, keep out, etc. and regardless, we still get nosy people coming by to look around. One pair tried to tow my husband’s truck away. He was home and warned them off. Men come by trying to sell frozen meat. Jehovahs witnesses. People who are lost and can’t seem to read the big numbers on the mailbox. It’s astounding.

If they won’t give up, I’ll go out on the 3rd floor balcony to get them to leave, just to hush the dog up. I hate revealing that I’m home but it’s fun to see them think i shouldn’t be home after all that knocking. I’d rather they thought no one was home.

If anyone ever dares to enter, I’m well protected.

I always look to see who it is first but years ago we were always answering the door to people that had run out of gas, needed water for their radiator, needed air in a tire, Hit a deer or Turkey and one time two teenage boys went in the ditch and the car landed on it's side so they came to use the phone. They were not hurt. Also another time late in the evening a guy knocked on the door needing to call a wrecker as his sons RV had quit. He couldn't get hold of them so he was waiting in the house and when he finally got the wrecker service he went to tell his son but came back and said "he is gone!" A motorist had stopped and got the RV running and told the guy to go home(about 5miles) and he would follow him and that his dad was in good hands! So we had to take the dad home. I was actually going to start a journal about all of the people that stopped. Rain storms and snow storms made for unexpected company too!

Hmmm. Just thinking back on who has hit our bell unexpectedly:

My neighbor wanting to know if I want to go for a walk with her

The electric utility guy telling us he's got to change our meter

The generator repair guy telling us he's going to service our machine

Our mail carrier delivering a package and asking if she can use our potty

A stranger asking about the colors we used on our siding and trim on our house

Some tree guys with a police officer who were trimming trees, accidentally hit our wires, asking if we still had power

I do sometimes. We have cameras that cover every door and window,plus 4 large dogs that go nuts at the sight of anything. If someone comes to our fairly secluded house,they have usually got a reason. I've never gotten sales people out here. If someone comes knocking,it's usually either The mailman or my closest neighbor,an older woman or her grandson to tell me that I have a package at her house. The only creepy thing that has happened since we moved here was once when I was walking back up the loooooong driveway from the mailbox,a car with all the windows broken out (I mean ALL of them,even the windshield) pulled up in the driveway and passed me and went up to the house. I ran up there and he got out and started looking around. He said nothing,it was weird. Luckily,SO was outside around back with Otis,our pitbull/great Dane mix and he had his shotgun with him. Otis started growling and came running,which alerted SO. The guy stopped in his tracks,said " hey man uhhhhhhhhh I'm looking for JJ,he lives here. " I know the people who sold me this house. None of them go by " JJ. " I dont know what his deal was. But I wasn't afraid, I am well protected. The bigger problem around here is people who don't knock on the door. For example, the power company will send contractors to cut limbs or spray herbicide on our property. They just pull up get out and start traipsing around without letting us know what they are doing. You would think that they would know better. It's not a good idea. Once they came and just started moving stuff around. They hooked up to one of SOs trailers to move it out of their way, WITHOUT A WORD. WTH????? We have 10 cars, so it's not like They could think no one was home. They got a lesson in common courtesy that day,for what it's worth.

The police here advise to never let the person think no ones home. Too many break in that way. Instead, hold a phone in your hand like you are busy on the phone and wave them off. I have a leaded glass door, so they can see me. The police also say any size dog will make a burglar think twice. We had a 80 lb dog so if I wondered what someone wanted, I had no fear. He has passed away. We recently adopted a 45 lb dog. Omg-she is uninterested whether someone is at the door or not!!! So we bought a Ring doorbell.

Lisa,when Sammy(our 80 pound pittie) was still alive, if someone were to break in when no one was here,he would show them where the good stuff is! But he LOOKED like he would take their face off,so I guess that's what mattered.

I really think it depends on where you live. I have lived on a farm growing up and our doors weren't locked, people just came in "hollering" to make sure everyone was decent, I lived at college, in a city then a gated condo where people had to ring in and a medium town in a neighborhood, then back to a farm and now another farm area. If there is a knock on my front door it alarms me a bit. Also, the way my home is sighted on the property you have to look for the front door. It is interesting to me thinking about this that I grew up and even when my kids were young it was a stop by anytime thing but now even my closest family and friends give a call before they stop by. During the day our side door is usually unlocked and after they call and ask if we are home/busy they don't usually knock. I prefer if friends/family give a ring and say they are close by and want to stop by. It gives me time to put on something better than my old, worn out yoga pants!

I live in old, worn out yoga pants!!!

Hey, you show up unannounced? WYSIWYG !

I have a clear glass storm door. When I do decide to answer, my dog is right there hysterical, so I can just point to him, shake my head no and close the regular door.

Funny story: During election time, I was getting lots of soliciting door to door. One day I was in the kitchen and didn't bother answering. I looked over at the front door and a very tall man was knocking on my door window (which is up very high!) waving a letter. It was UPS! I explained that I got tired of answering for all the political visitors.

I never answer the door. I may yell "I'm not interested!!!!!". My dog goes crazy when someone knocks so no one in their right mind would try and come in our house. She has a really ferocious bark too...like Cujo is in our house!

I think the key is knowing your area, knowing what is out of normal, keeping up with the local news so you're alerted to scams or crime waves (hopefully not major stuff for any of us, but it pays to read the paper).

Sure, you can't judge a book by its cover, and some way crazy criminals "looked" fine. But they are thankfully few and far between. And they are not likely to be going from house to house, holding brochures, walking with a small group, wearing matching brightly colored t-shirts, etc. But that's my street, in a low-crime little city. Country living, and high-crime areas, and suburbs where you can't easily see your whole street, are entirely different, I agree.

No dog, just a Ring doorbell. We're hardly ever home and the Ring has alerted us to delivery men and the little girl down the street who shoots hoops in my driveway. She comes to the Ring, announces, "Papa, I'm here to play", and goes about her routine. I buy GSA cookies from the same girl.

Our community is posted No Soliciting and very rarely does a solicitor show up. Politicians do, because they are exempt.

I dislike people who enter my back sunporch and knock on the kitchen door. NO! you knock on the outside door. And peeking through the glass on the door to look into the house will really set me off.

I really don’t like unexpected visitors as does my daughter so we have a family rule of “no surprise popins”. Other than a random religious person, I can’t remember the last time someone unexpected knocked at our door. We have a fairly long drive, a no soliciting sign which helps and our dog is a good size. Her bark can sound pretty threatening when we have deliveries.

We really prefer that visitors let us know when they are coming by so that we can put the dogs up. I cannot answer the front door because my biggest dog will force his way past me to get between the 'intruder' and his mama. I really don't want my dog to bite or even jump at anyone. I usually go into the laundry room and close that door, then exit the house through the garage. I have a big, tacky (bright yellow) 'do not ring the doorbell or knock' sign out front. It states that this household charges $50 per minute to listen to sales pitches, political viewpoints and religious messages, paid in advance. Election supporters drove me crazy this year and I just don't tolerate door to door sales. My friends and neighbors all text or catch me when I'm outside already.

I can’t wait til we get high speed internet/WiFi out here, supposedly the end of the year (or whenever, I’m just thrilled to hear they’re working on it!) My first improvement will be getting Ring or something similar.

I have a window in my front door. The door is an old probably uninsulated wood door with a 1' square window on the top. In that window we put a piece of Styrofoam so 1) it doesn't ice over in the winter and 2) it makes the house darker when we are watching 3D movies on tv and 3) nobody can look inside to see if we are in the house when they ring the doorbell. If I'm not expecting anyone, I usually go into my office quietly and look out the window to see if I recognize the vehicle they came in. If I don't or there is no vehicle, I don't answer the door.

I live in a highly populated area and I usually answer the doorbell. I know a lot of my neighbors and it's not 100% safe anywhere, but I try to do my part. I'm pretty good about cutting off unwanted sales pitches. I think my list of people who come to the door are a lot like Matthias Lang's above.

We are willing to help the neighbors who come to the door. The little boy next door has a ball that comes over the fence rather frequently. We've had kids ride their bikes to the neighborhood who had no lights and couldn't find their way out after dark. They were thirsty and upset. I called the police to help take them home since they lived on the other side of town and I was a stranger to them. My neighbor two doors down flew back home after Christmas and accidentally locked himself out of the house after 10 pm. We had only met once and so I knew who he was. I let him in and he used my phone to call a locksmith. Another neighbor had their pipes freeze for a second year in a row because he was on a cruise. I knocked on his next door neighbor's door and we were able to turn off the water and inform the guy of his problem.

We have a couple of neighborhood Facebook pages. If we get some bad solicitor's like the van load of criminals they drop off to sell magazine's, someone will make a post and that person will find their workday cut short.

Always! My driveway is 213' long. If someone is all the way UP HERE.....no one knows it. If I just need to ask them to leave my property, then it's worth answering before they start "looking around". One day I heard the water running out front....someone was filling their water bottle at my faucet.

Nicole - Wow. Filling their water bottle! A number of years ago we had reports of people stealing copper pipes from outdoor showers in our beach neighborhoods, and recently have had stories about beach and landfill stickers being scraped off vehicles in driveways. Overall, though, we feel safe here.

Used to. But just today, we had a couple of ladies in dark skirts and white blouses at the end of our driveway, and decided since we didn't want to be converted to anything not to answer the door. Hung out in a back room for a while, till we thought they would be gone, and then peeked and saw them walking away.

Moni

On the water bottle filling... we have had problems in the past during the time that the neighborhood was being built. We would hear water running. Apparently, the builders weren't getting the water hooked up in time for houses being built. The workers would need water for a project like bricking and would go hook up a hose to people's houses for their use. It was customary among the builders to allow this while the house was being built. Those of us who were new owners weren't so thrilled. They used each others dumpsters too.

I don't think it would even occur to me to not answer the door. Even if is someone selling something or proselytizing and all I'm going to do is merely to tell them to get back in their vehicle and leave. At our previous house the driveway was about 1/10 of a mile, and someone coming to the door was an unusual occurrence, perhaps once or twice a year. At our new place the driveway is 3/4 of a mile, and except for the full-sized semi that took a very-wrong-turn on the way to "Home Goods" and a local politician who never made it as far as the house, there haven't been any unexpected visitors.

Simply put, no. For a couple reasons. First, I'm tired of salespeople, roofing scams, lawn services, Bible bangers wanting to save me when they should consider saving themselves from Granny Clampett's rock salt and bacon rind, and yes, even the kids selling the $12 candy bars so their school can get 10¢ of the profit. It's still not easy to be jumping up and running to the door. If people are coming to see me, they know to call first. Otherwise they might have to wait a while for me to get there. And second, I'm often in my underwear. Some are offended if I answer the door that way. I haven't put a peephole in this door, and I should. Keep forgetting about it. Stretching to look out the window on top isn't easy either. People have this idea that it's their "right" to invade my privacy, in person or on the phone. Got news for ya. It isn't.

cynic, being offended because you opened your door while wearing your undies is just over the top to me especially when these people are invading your space unannounced . Next time it happens, tell them they are lucky you weren't nekked when you answered the door.

I always answer the door. Really see no reason not to and 98% of the time it is someone totally legit. At our old house, I had several close friends that had an open invitation to pop in and another time it was a neighbor in distress, sometimes someone looking for a lost pet and alerting the neighborhood. We've since moved and there is a lot of building in our neighborhood. Often a builder or his representative will stop by if anything is going to be disruptive. Once a water outage that was going to last about 30 minutes, another time a heads up that there was going to be a road blocked in one direction. I'd love for children selling something to drop by. I'm usually up and dressed for the day with the house clean (enough) by mid morning and have a 88 pound dog that goes to the door with me. His size might be a deterrent if anyone has anything sinister in mind, but he is so sweet with everyone that he isn't any real protection.

Stories right now......are about homeless folks. They get kicked out of their tents by the river, take an Uber up to the Cul de sac....and camp in the woods over night...before they head back down to the busy streets and highways. The warming fires under bridges are becoming a problem....starting the bridges on fire!

So far....we feel safe. That could change.

I always ask, "Who is it?" before opening. Some sales people keep quiet so I ask again and never open unless I know who it is. Yes, it's a good idea to let the person(s) know you're there so they don't go around to the back if their intentions aren't nice.

Funny you should mention about people using your water. Just yesterday we were talking about a farmer (we are very rural) who thought his water bill was unusually high, but he never saw anyone at the hydrant. Then one day he came home from work and saw a fresh pile of horse manure there. (I will try to be politically correct here - there is a large local population of persons who use horses as their only mode of transportation)

Not usually unless I can see who it is. The TV is usually on, so there is at least noise. Who knows if we've fallen asleep watching it? Which happens quite often with my DH. It's still pretty safe around here, but things have been changing, and happening further away from town. I usually know when the kids are coming, but if not, they have a key and yell when they come in.

It's been interesting reading everyone's comments.

Every year I look at the back of the box, girl scout cookies are continuing to be hydrogenated.

And not that good anyway.

They should start offering something else, something that isn't poisonous.

Embothrium, they are also more expensive and the box keeps getting smaller every year.

Yes, i do. If it's someone I know, i quiet the dogs. If I don't know who it is I allow the dogs to bark their *sses off.

"Every year I look at the back of the box, girl scout cookies are continuing to be hydrogenated."

I wonder if this varies by region, or more likely maybe you haven't looked lately? Here's what we bought most recently. There are no hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated ingredients:

:

Why does it matter that the boxes keep getting smaller? It's a fund raiser for a worthwhile organization and the campaign requires young ladies to do things outside their normal comfort zones. If you don't like the cookies, or think they're too expensive, you can always give them cash and tell them you don't eat cookies.

Unless you don't want to support them, in which case, why not say so straight out without an excuse?

Shortbreads are my fave GS cookies! Hubby likes ThinMints but I am not a chocolate lover, especially with mint. We don't have them often so don't care if they are bad for us!