My next door neighbors are an older married couple. Nice people. No kids. Very active in their church. They live on the corner of our little cul de sac and basically everyone entering the neighborhood drives right past their house. If they're home, their garage door is open. Motorcycle, truck, tools, all of it left unattended for many hours a day and occasionally overnight. It's not like there's a bunch of people coming and going, they may have a few people a month stop by.

The house across the way sold recently and a young family moved in. I haven't gone over there yet because they've been busy with moving stuff in and unpacking, but the last few days, things seem to have calmed down. They leave their garage door open all day also.

To be absolutely clear before anyone jumps on my for not minding my own business or saying what a grown man ought do with his own home: I am not complaining. I don't care what they do with their stuff, that's their business. I am saying I simply do not understand this. It baffles me. We live on the edge of the general Phoenix suburban metro sprawl nonsense, and while the open desert is two miles up the road, two miles in the other direction is where the shambling zombie meth heads roam. I'm not scared in my own home, but I figure doors and locks are the bare minimum and exist for reasons. Open doors and unlocked front and back doors are verboten in my household. Garage door? Unless I'm in there, or back and forth a lot for projects going on where I'm closely monitoring it, then absolutely forget it. Why make it easy for someone to just waltz into your home or walk off with your tools?

Do you leave your garage door open all day when you're home? What am I missing here? If you live in a town of 500 people in some rural farm community where everyone knows everyone and visitors get watched like hawks, then that's one thing, but some place like this? I don't get it.

Nope, unless I am piddling outside, the G doors stay shut. No sense advertising to thieves doing their shopping.

If I am doing things in the front or back yard I do leave it open. Sometimes for the entire day.

I have forgotten it open overnight on occasion.

I know all my neighbors since 1980 and while not an affluent circle, everyone is hardworking middle class or retired.

quote:

Originally posted by BigWhup:
Nope, unless I am piddling outside, the G doors stay shut. No sense advertising to thieves doing their shopping.

Yup, same here. You think your neighborhood is safe, until it wasn’t. Some neighborhoods are safer than others, but none is ever completely safe. Some years ago, a doctor who lived in West University, one of the nicest and safest areas of H-town, was murdered by a fucking illegal alien. That maggot eventually got the needle.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
Do you leave your garage door open all day when you're home?

No, and I live in a neighborhood that is basically crime free and mostly retired couples. Neighbors will leave them open for a short period of time, and I do as well, while mowing the lawn, doing yard work, or washing the car when I need to go in/out of the garage. But nobody in my neighborhood leaves them open all day. In fact, I don't think I have seen this since the 1970s.

If I leave mine open too long I will have feral cats snooping around in it within the hour. Had a bear wander in one time as well. My garage door is only open if I'm in it or just outside.

We keep the garage door closed. Not only that, we actually park both cars in the garage. There are about 40 houses in my neighborhood. There are only a handful that park either one or both cars in the garage because the garage is too full.

Nope, the only times my garage door is open is when I pull my vehicle in or out or if I am working in it in warm weather. I don't want every person that drives by seeing what I have. I also lock all exterior doors behind me no matter what side I am on. I have neighbors right across the street that aren't like me.

No. If I leave by bike outside it’s in the back yard and not visible from the street.

One friend used to leave his in my driveway but it had a pretty good anti theft device on it, his club affiliation logo was pretty prominent.

quote:

To be absolutely clear before anyone jumps on my for not minding my own business or saying what a grown man ought do with his own home: I am not complaining.

I’m sorry but that’s exactly what you’re doing…

I live in a gated HOA maintained community where leaving your garage doors open are against the “rules” but absolutely no one complains.We have two Tier1 guys who live within 100 yards of us so no one has any security issues around here.

It’s definitely an old person thing.

When we visit my in-laws, they leave theirs open all day. Doors unlocked. Anyone could just walk in.

My dad doesn’t leave the garage door open, but he leaves his front doors open (two of them). The outer screen door is unlocked. Same thing. Anyone could just walk in.

I leave it open on non-rainy days outside of winter. If someone wants to rob me to get the junk in there, they can try. I wouldn't recommend it.

If I’m outside at all or piddling in the garage I leave the side entry garage open because you can’t see in from the street and I live in a semi rural gated subdivision with 25 total houses. Otherwise both doors are always closed and all vehicles are inside.

I just can’t see an upside other than one thing. Growing up we had an attic fan that exhausted into the garage so we would leave a side walk-in door open to let all the hot air out. If we didn’t have a side walk-in door we might have left a garage door open, who knows.

Hell no.

The only time it's open is if I'm working in my garage, driveway, or front yard, or actively driving in or out of the garage.

I don't even leave it open when I go around back to mow the back yard.

When patrolling my neighborhoods, the number of people who left their garage doors open all night long amazed me. If the garage doors are open, access to the interior of the house is much less secure, since that interior door is often not as strong or locked in the same way a main entry outside door would be.
Quite a few left the vehicle door cracked open about a foot so their cat could come and go as he pleased. So could all kinds of other fun varmints, too. Especially if a pet door was installed on the access door to the house. I had fun evicting all the unwanted animals who came in with the cat!

My brother had a neighbor that used to leave their door open just a little. Maybe a foot or so. A person slid under the door and came in their house and came face to face with the wife. The neighborhood seemed safe. So no.

Mine stays closed unless I am pulling a vehicle into or out of it. My nearest neighbor has a wife who cannot help but fill their 2 car garage completely full of shit she buys at yard sales. I mean full to the ceiling. They have to park on the driveway and curb. Every so often, her long-suffering husband has to haul all that crap to the thrift store or landfill.

We have a few on our street that do, but they're the outliers.
Our garage was converted by the previous owners into a room [decked level floor with a mini-split], so the garage door only gets used to move something large in/out that we don't want to squeeze through the front door.

We're 1/2 mile on the road & .3 in a straight line from the interstate, but it's a quiet neighborhood [apart from highway noise] for the most part.
3 yrs & we've never had anything nefarious happen on our street that I'm aware of.

This question made me think of my youth living in New Jersey.

We lived I what I considered a small town. At that time every one in the neighborhood had been there for years so we all knew each other.

The area did not get a lot of traffic other than the neighbors because the neighborhood was at the end of the road right before the woods started.

With that said at the time almost everyone kept their garage doors open.

If I go to Google Maps today and look at a street view of the house that my mom still lives in the garage door is open and I can see the front of my fathers 1966 mustang.

Now as far at where I live now, never, Even though I live in a gated community I only know the neighbors directly around me.

I have a camera that covers my driveway and the street. At time it is almost crazy with the number of cars and people going by my house during the day.

Only during the day and while I'm outside working and using stuff from the garage.