Ever Been Locked Out Of Your Home?

Has this ever happened to you? Walking out of your home, locking the door behind you, only to discover that you left your house key inside the house?!! Yikes!!

Well, that happened to me today! And let me tell you, being locked out of your own house for over three hours is no fun! 🙁

Here’s the scoop on that silly little mishap.

So, my kids and I decided to go for an evening run, and of course didn’t want to bring a bunch of keys with us. The plan was to lock the front door and go out the back leaving that door unlocked. In our old house, we would just type in our secret code in our garage door keypad and voila – keyless entry!. But our new garage door hasn’t yet been programmed (I think it was made by aliens because no one has been able to figure out how to program it. 🙂 ). My wonderful daughter was responsible for this task while I got my running shoes on. Bless her little heart, she totally forgot that our garage door keypad doesn’t work yet and locked both the front and back doors! Oh ohh! 🙁

To make matters worse, we all left our cell phones in the house!!!

After trying unsuccessfully to pick the locks with the only thing we had available – the bobby pins in our hair, we gave in and went to find a neighbor. We’ve only waved hi and hello to our new neighbors, so I hardly wanted to start out our relationship like this. But they were so very helpful. Tiffany and Adam, who live directly across the street from my home are a wonderful young couple with three kids. Adam is a police officer and had some great connections whom he called but they were all busy or too far away to come to my rescue. Tiffany was busy calling locksmiths who were either too expensive, or don’t service our area (we’re country folk now 🙂 )

Finally Adam calls Alex, another police officer who lives right next door to them (also across the street from me – talk about security!). He works for the Katy Police Dept and they actually carry a special tool to literally break into cars (legally of course). The plan was to break into my car and then we could simply use the garage door opener to open the garage door to get in! Brilliant! But we had to wait until he was off duty which was in an hour’s time 🙁

Alex finally got home and did just that! In about 2 minutes he had “broken into” my car and the plan worked perfectly! Or did it?!!! Nope! The door from the garage to the house was locked!!! By this time my stress level had hit the roof and I was not a happy camper. I could see my poor daughter feeling horrible and completely blaming herself! I wasn’t helping her feel better, and I now regret that. The feeling of helplessness and no control over the situation was the worst part for me.

Adam and Alex were not about to leave me stranded however- they are police officers; helping a damsel in distress is in their DNA. So that they did! Together they decided to force entry to the locked door and warned me that it would mean a visit to Home Depot to purchase a new knob. I was more than happy to give them the go-ahead. This was now 10:30 PM and I was ready to go home. In a matter of minutes, they succeeded at unlocking the door! FINALLY!!! What a relief! We were home!

Home Sweet Home Indeed!

Even in that crazy moment some amazing things happened. For one, I got to learn just a bit more about my neighbors and was even invited to a house-warming party on Saturday. The kids and I still went for a run while we waited for help, and that gave us a chance to laugh a little despite our misfortune. We also got a chance to witness a mamma bird who has made her nest in the tiny oak tree in our front yard feeding her baby birdies worms. The things you notice when you have time to kill 🙂

In the end, it all worked out and lesson learned! But the situation begs the age-old question “How many cops does it take to pick a door lock?” 🙂 I guess I can laugh now, but it wasn’t quite as funny when Adam cracked that joke in the middle of this dilemma 🙂 He was nice enough to try to lighten my mood and for that I thank him.

I have been Googling articles about what to do if you are ever locked out of your house and I found this one that might be helpful in the future (even though I don’t plan to go through this again). Click here to read the article on The Housing Forum. My friend Dov Shapira with Shapira Builders is also a great resource if you are ever locked out and you live in Phoenix Arizona.

Have you ever been locked out of your home or car? Tell us about it! I’d like to think I’m not the only one 🙂

When you do get back into your home, you can call me for help with your décor 🙂 . You can contact me here for more information on my design services, and connect with me on my social media sites.

Thanks for reading. Please comment, like and share 🙂

Hope you all have a fantastic Friday! And make sure you don’t get locked out of the house!! 🙂

Ps. A big shout out to the Katy and Brookshire police departments!

Be Inspired!

Veronica Solomon

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