I am going to add a huge grain of salt and doubt that this happened to her, but it rings true enough that it may have happened to somebody else.

One of the things I did from almost the day I started driving was to keep the house keys and the car keys separate.

 

The idea comes from my dad who had a track record of losing keys and a couple of times he “misplaced them, we had to change the cylinders of the house doors, gates and padlocks plus he had to go thorough the expense of having the car re-keyed also.

Amazingly, after splitting the keys, he never lost the car keys again, but the house keys went missing twice more. By this time we had cylinders already bought and on call at home.

I am a man of several defects, but I have never lost a set of keys in my life. My beloved has also been graced with the same blessing and she also believes in the power of keys’ splitting.

And, of course, neither one of us is dumb enough to leave all the frigging keys in the unlocked car!

 

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By Miguel.GFZ

Semi-retired like Vito Corleone before the heart attack. Consiglieri to J.Kb and AWA. I lived in a Gun Control Paradise: It sucked and got people killed. I do believe that Freedom scares the political elites.

13 thoughts on “Splitting keys for security reasons”
  1. I keep my keys in a folding leather case, so they don’t chew up my pocket and my leg. Modern car keys (with the electronics molded into the plastic) are much too bulky, so they’re separate. House key, keys to various storage cabinets and such, and (for hysterical raisins) P-38 can opener ride around in the pocket; vehicle keys live elsewhere, and get grabbed as needed.
    … And, inexplicably, all too many non-electronic keys nowadays have bulky plastic bows that make them nigh-impossible to accommodate in a convenient pocket carrier, but that’s a rant for another day.
    (Random side thought: are tickets to a ball game actually a thing this year?)

    1. Why yes, ball game tickets are a thing. You can buy sky box tickets for $30 each or a good B.J. (joke).

      Standard scam method, leave something to good to pass up. For a fictional look at scam costs, watch “The Sting”. The entire scam is based on taking a little amount of money and making it into large amounts. It always starts with giving away cash in order for the mark to feel like it is worth investing(giving) money to get more easy cash back.

      Every single one of my ladies has had this blind spot in terms of keys and security. I’ve gone shopping with my current wife, she takes her phone and wallet from her purse and puts goes to leave her purse on the floor of the truck. I have a fit. “But there’s nothing in my purse worth stealing!” Except that it has her keys and I don’t want to pay to have a truck window replaced.

      If your kid needs to get to the hospital that badly that you are going to run through the neighborhood looking for a car to “borrow”, don’t you think they would have just called 911 and gotten a ride to the hospital with the people that will be able to care for the kid?

      If you “borrow” somebodies car, do you really think they are going to pay you back in baseball game tickets? If they can afford tickets, they can afford the things to get to and from the hospital.

      Every part of the borrowed car story screams scam, but there were those tickets so…..

    1. Being kinda paranoid about locking my keys in the car (potentially in some remote location), I long ago got into the habit of not closing the door or trunk lid unless I have my other hand on the car key.

      1. Exactly!!!!

        One accidental door closure with the keys sitting on the driver seat taught me that lesson. When the door lock gets engaged the keys live in my hand until it is closed and confirmed locked.

        Have not been locked out of my car since I started that protocol.

        As a gun owner, do you not clear the gun as soon as you pick it up? Pull the mag, cycle the action, lock the bolt open, confirm light is coming through both the mag well and the barrel.
        We all do it.

        So, why lock the car door without a similar practice.

  2. I’ve never split my keys. I drive older cars, and, since I don’t have keys with chips, they’re just flat metal. (Next car replacement probably will have a chip key, so I may have to rethink that….) I’ve (almost) never lost keys. (I think training as a locksmith made me more conscious of keys.)

    (The “almost,” above, had to do with a bicycle lock and somewhat remote campground, on a long ride down the California coast. An MSR stove annealed the metal, and the ranger’s hacksaw cut through the shackle. My wife still brings it up if I talk about not losing keys. I still say a racoon made off with the key…)

  3. I doubt that story as well, but I have kept my keys separate for nearly four decades because: 1) I don’t want a giant wad of keys for multiple cars (I had six at one point) and two houses in my pocket, and 2) A giant wad of keys hanging from it is bad for your car’s ignition lockwork/electrics (about a decade ago, Fords had a recall due to fires from this habit).

    I’ve never lost a key from carelessness, but when working as a loader at a UPS hub in the ’80s (which was 40 miles from home), my house key apparently broke through my pocket and disappeared into one of the trucks I’d loaded. Because I kept my keys separate (and in different pockets), I didn’t lose my car key, much less *all* of my keys.

  4. What amazes me is how many people hand their house key to a mechanic because it is attached to their car key. And, most states require you carry a registration and insurance card in the vehicle. And…. what is on those documents? Yeah, your address.

    Might as well not have locks on your house.

  5. I have a D ring on my belt, with multiple key rings dangling from it. Cars separate from house etc. I grab whichever i need and leave the rest on my belt.
    Coworkers make fun of the janitor key ring, but it works.

  6. My modern car has a pushbutton starter and remote control locks so I open the doors with the key fob still in my pocket and never take the keys out of my pocket. The truck is old school but I just make sure I lock the door with my key when I park. Fortunately my wife saw the bill for a new Mazda key fob when our used car came with only one key so she is very diligent and has her home and office keys,separate from her car keys

  7. I’ve split my keys up for a while now. So does my wife. My car keys live on a ring on a dedicated carabiner, and the house keys on a lanyard attached to my belt. I even have a couple of those barrel-shaped “quick release” doohickies to split the house keys up even further, since I usually have two houses’ worth of keys (mine and my mom’s).

    We’ve had to make enough return trips to the mechanic to pick up the house keys, or fumble with removing a few particular keys from an overstuffed ring, to learn that lesson. LOL!

  8. The ticket thing is an old scam. A thief will send someone theater tickets or game tickets on some pretext (you won a contest you never heard of or entered, or he’s doing a random act of kindness). Then he robs your house on the evening he knows you will be away

Only one rule: Don't be a dick.

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