I've always wanted a stone cottage.

Not any more it isn't!

;)

We have hidden keys somewhere in the yard, but thieves know about the stone. ;) Ours is in a very good inconspicuous spot.

We hide our extra emergency house key in the garage where it would be impossible to find (we have a "where's waldo" loaded garage. The key to the garage is also well hidden outside in our "where's waldo" lean-to.

We do have a house key hidden outside, but we have digital locks on the garage and the inside door so we can't lock ourselves out... unless we forget the codes.

We haven't hid a key at home in a long time since keypads. One is non battery operated. At camp we have a keypad key lockbox mounted outside in an inconspicuous place.

I get locks set up so that one key opens all external doors. The garage to house door is locked only with a deadbolt. To lock it from the garage side, as when leaving the house, requires using the key. By following that habit religiously, it's impossible to leave the house without having the house key in my pocket or for my wife, in her purse. Should the key be lost when out, there's one concealed (but not really hidden) in each garage. We park cars in the garage and open the doors with an RF signal.

In the most unlikely combination of events, should the power be out AND we've lost a key while away from the place, we'd be locked out. That's never happened. If I return home and the power is out so that I can't open the garage door, the key that locked the garage to house door that I have in my pocket also unlocks the front door.

I had a friend who lived near a shopping mall. There was a sign with raised letters (I think for a movie theater. This was a long time ago.) One time we were there and he showed me how years earlier, he'd stashed a spare house key on top of a letter. Apparently no one cleaned up there. If anyone had come across his key, they would have no idea what it was for. Not great if the mall was closed, but otherwise, I thought it was pretty clever.

Little kids like to pull stones like that out. I think it could be discovered.

We have access through the garage with the keypad. I've thought about hiding a key, but am afraid a yard guy or some other type work person would find it.

It is also impossible to leave that stone cottage without using the key to lock the deadbolt.

This is also what I have for my front door, and for the gate to my back yard, I reset the lock myself so that one key unlocks both the deadbolt and the door handle. The door handle to my front door does not have a lock and doesn't need one, just like the stone cottage.

All of my locks are the same brand and came with equipment so that I can set all of the locks to be the same, including the gate locks, but I do not want this because I often give gate keys to the neighbors when we go away, so that they can water certain plants or let the meter read into the back yard. I don't want the gate key to open the front door or the exterior kitchen door, but I did set the kitchen door to match the front door. The sliding glass patio door can only be opened from the back yard if it is locked.

The front door in Cathedral City has a keypad lock, and it will always work, unless the batteries are dead, but it can also be opened with a key. We have divided light French doors to the patio from the house there with a deadbolt and locking door handle, which I set to require the same key. The gate key is different because the pool guy has a copy of that. Without electricity, I cannot open the garage door in Cathedral City, and so if we lost electricity in an earthquake, the cars would not be accessible - something I had not thought of before.

When I lived in Venice, I had a combination lock on the garage door, and I hid a door key inside the garage. It was possible to lock myself out of that house.

I always thought hiding places like that were weird......anyone on the street can see where you get and return the "hidden key". I used to hide a key in my garden shed; I figured people could see me go into my back yard and return with a key, but they wouldn't see where it came from unless they approached and watched me over the back gate.

As a kid, I made a fake mud dauber's nest among the real ones on a brick wall beneath the porch. I hid a key in it. With working parents, six kids in the family, of whom only the oldest carried keys, sometimes one of the littles got home from school before the key carriers. They could break down the fake nest and let themselves in. When ever that happened, I re-built the "nest". I don't think any one outside the family was going to mess with mud daubers (they are hornets).

Mud dauber nests

Oh, I never knew what those nests were called. Now I know. We have some in the stonework on our front porch...they blend in so well, you really have to look for them to even find them.

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This is what we have. There is enough car rabble laying around in our carport that it blends in and no one thinks to look at the bottom of tire foam cans to see if the bottom comes off. Anyone who would want to break in is really dumb anyway. We have 4 huge scary dogs, down from 5 a mere week ago. 😔

Its mainly for me, because I will lock my keys in my car or in the house.... Before we got it I locked my keys in the house by locking the bottom handle before closing the door. SO was on the road so I has to break my kitchen door window to get in.

I have a key for a deadbolt lock ( side door only ) hanging on a nail in a brown plastic case. On a tree. On 72 wooded acres. If you lock yourself out, going to get the key is your "punishment" 😄😉

My DH knows where every one of our neighbors on our street hides their keys - we are the only people who live here year round and they call or email him to let contracters into their houses or check on things after storms. The most brilliant hiding place I know of is a key put under the bark of a pine tree. We don't always lock our doors because our dogs are our security system. But no one would know that because they're not vicious, only exhuberant and could seriously injure you if you let them charge out of the front door and run over you on their way out of town...

In laws have a famiky cottage. If you forgot your personal cottage key, there is a spare. The spare is very well hidden…In the Outhouse. Apparently, one has to reach around the seat to find it. In 20 yrs, I think the Outhouse key has been used once once. It is a crap shoot to find it.

Very clever idea and much better than hiding a key under a flower pot !

Several family members, and a friend have a key to my house, so no need to hide one. The only problem is they all work weekdays, so if I need help it better be on an evening or a weekend.

I used to keep a key hidden in one of those magnetic key cases inside the top of my Stop a Squirrel birdfeeder. Now that I use a cane, I keep a key to the house and the lock I use at the Y on that. I wish my car had a spare key, instead of just remotes.

I think the stone block idea is very clever for a spare key, but of course, not for everyday use. I don't think it would be very obvious to anyone watching from a distance.

I have an extra one of those little magnetic boxes for spare car keys and it's stuck to some metal, out of sight on our back porch. The box is black and hard to see. I've had to use it more than once when I accidentally locked myself out 😏

We don't have any spare car keys to hide now because getting a 2nd spare costs a few hundred bucks - hasn't been an issue in over 5 years.

I have lots of spare keys, but with one exception, they're all in the house. I don't leave the house without a house key because I always lock up with it (and there's a spare housekey on my car key fob) if I'm leaving by car. The one exception is the spare key in the neighhbour's lock box, to which we both have access, so we can look after each other's houses when the other is away.

We have two remotes for each car (and the actual keys for both our cars are inside the remote).

I guess I'm not really understanding why one would leave keys outside.

I too take my keys everywhere, but I have some outside just in case. I did use them a couple of times when I left my car running in the winter when I had to run in to get something, but I don't make a habit of using them.

"I guess I'm not really understanding why one would leave keys outside"

Emergencies - those that leave you with lost or damaged keys. They're not things you use frequently - hopefully not at all. But on that occasion when your keys fall down a sewer grate, or your purse gets snatched, it's nice to have. You have one in your neighbour's lock box, so that will suffice.

The key isn’t obvious to people looking from down the street if it is on the side or back of the house. Most people I know hide their key NOT in front. And of course it is for emergencies, not daily use.

"I guess I'm not really understanding why one would leave keys outside"

In my part of the US, exterior doors often have two bolts - a spring loaded bolt operated by the door handle that retracts when the handle is turned and then extends back into the jam when the door is closed. And a dead bolt that is either open or closed when turned by a key or inside grab handle.

Door handle/door lever hardware often can be set to a soft lock on the inside, so that the outside piece can't be moved to open the door. If the door handle lock connected to the soft bolt is on, it can be opened from the inside. If so set and you walk out the door and close it, the door is locked and you need a key to get back inside. Doors from a home's interior to an attached garage are (I believe) required by code to have automatic door closers - the door closes if not held or wedged open.

If on such a garage connecting door the door handle switch were set to "Lock", then every time one walks from the house into the garage, the door closes itself and is locked from the garage side. If moving things back and forth to/from the garage, it's easy enough to lock oneself out. My solution to that is that we always leave the doorknob lock "Unlocked" and when wishing to lock that door, we simply use the deadbolt. Turning a handle from the inside, using a key from the garage side. And with an extra key placed in an accessible but not immediately visible site (not "hidden") in the garage should the lower handle-operated lock accidently get moved to the locked position and prevent use of the door knob to get back in.

We don't have a lock on the door from our garage into our house. But we do have 2 dogs who would make intruders think twice.

One cold winter's morning I got a frantic call from my mother's caregiver. When she took the trash out, the garage door swung shut behind her. She had on shorts, tee, and shoes, and it was about 10⁰F. I scrambled into clothes, telling her I'd be there in 15 minutes, when DH reminded me of the Life Alert lock box on another door. I wasn't thinking too clearly in the morning. It had been there so long and never used that we just didn't see it anymore, kwim? Anyway, so glad we had it. J was able to get back inside in a minute and warm up, and Mom was okay.