Who has keys to your home?

"Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without." Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), American Writer, "If You Don't Mind My Saying So," — The American Scholar (1967)

For a lot of years, I have had great pleasure in writing about ideas and trends to make your homes, well, yours. Places you love and places that have become your personal world. You're proud of them, comfortable in them and love to have friends and family come in to enjoy them. Today I just wanted to pass on a little reminder about keeping these wonderful places safe.

This is the time of year many of us go on vacation or stay at home and take on home renovations or other home projects. It's a time when other folks may have access to our homes, and we sometimes start passing out our house keys. To keep our inside spaces safe, we need to think about just who has a key to our house.

A survey that I ran across had some very interesting and frightening facts about keys. The study was conducted by Customer Profiles and Master Lock Company. The study had these key findings (quoted here):

• Seventy-three percent of respondents give a key to a neighbor or friend, and nearly 20 percent have given a key to workers in their home, including contractors, painters and other service people.

• 12 percent of homeowners have also given keys to cleaning workers, and 10 percent to boyfriends and girlfriends.

• Nearly half of the survey respondents realized that relatives or acquaintances of those they've given a key to — people they do not know and have never met — have had access to that key.

• Even more troubling, homeowners are giving direct access to their house keys to potential strangers like mechanics, valet parking attendants, cleaning workers and baby sitters. This sends an alarming message that many individuals simply aren't doing enough to protect their keys and are opening their doors to potential threats to their home and family.

I'm sure we've all been in those situations. Friends have keys (what if I keeled over one day; somebody would have to be able to get in). I like for at least one neighbor to have a key because stuff happens and — I don't know about you — but I don't want to spend the night on my patio because I lost my keys or absent-mindedly locked the door by mistake and I'm outside in my pajamas!

A lot of my friends use pet sitters when they travel rather than pet hotels. Lots of us have people who come in to take care of our homes. And, in reality, we can't be home all the time. They need keys. So people we trust have access to our homes, and those people are not the issue.

You can see how it happens. You pass your key on to somebody; it gets stolen or misplaced; somebody else picks it up and knows the connection between you and the person who lost it. It's like six degrees of separation and pretty scary.

Realistically, if you have five keys out to folks, 50 or 60 people could have access to your house. This makes you think you might as well just hang it on the doorknob over the welcome mat.

The point is we've all worked very hard to have our little sanctuaries, and we need to be a little more responsible with the keys to our home.

Here are a few additional, easy things to remember relative to our keys:

• Since we live in valet world here in Las Vegas, have a separate valet key. I'm not suggesting your valet driver will take your keys, but somebody else might. Why risk losing all of those keys when you can just use the valet one.

• If you have a lot of keys out to friends, etc., and you're not sure exactly who has them, go ahead and change the locks. It's probably a good idea to do that periodically.

• Be very careful with your keys and never attach them to anything with your name and address on it.

• And for goodness sake, don't hide them outside in one of those hiding places that look like rocks. Burglars know all the tricks.

Again, be careful. Your home is your castle, and you certainly don't want unwanted guests. Friends and family we pretty much have to let in, but don't make it easy for those you don't know. We all still have a lot of decorating to do.

— Carolyn Muse Grant is a founder and past president of the Architectural & Decorative Arts Society, as well as an interior design consultant/stylist specializing in home staging. Send questions to creativemuse@cox.net.