Like a key that could use a little turning

[venta]

I've just been reading an article about the threat posed to companies by sysadmins, and the trouble they can cause when they leave. In it, the writer draws the analogy to his own son who, on moving out of the family house, will be required to leave his doorkeys behind: "Just because he lived here does not mean he's entitled to just walk in when it suits him."

Which surprised me. I still have a key to my parents' house, despite having not significantly lived there in a decade. I feel it would be impolite just to walk in unannounced (not to mention impractical - our respective abodes are a couple of hundred miles apart), but in theory I could. When I visit, I let myself in rather than ringing the bell. Occasionally I stay there when my parents are away, though I do ask in advance.

Observation of a limited number of friends in the environs of their parents' houses has suggested that they have broadly similar arrangements.

So, o LJ, tell me what is normal, usual behaviour.

I guess it depends to some extent on the relationship you have with your parents and, possibly, whether or not they've moved since you last lived with them. I have never formally 'moved out' of my parents' house - my bedroom is still notionally my bedroom, and has quite a lot of my stuff in it; I suspect this will change if/when I ever manage to purchase my own residence. How many people do officially 'move out' as opposed to slowly drifting into new routines, leaving their parents' house festooned with junk to be tolerated, delivered in a crate or quietly thrown away. How many people have been relieved of their keys ? Have people been presented with keys to a new parental abode in which they've never lived ?

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I have a key to my parents current house, even though it's not actually the home I grew up in. I think that's normal.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

I have keys to the father-in-law's house, but not to either of my own parents' houses. Possibly because I've never lived in either of the latters' houses (they've moved since I lived with them) and the father-in-law's place was my home for a year or so, and remains only a mile from my house.
So neither relieved of keys, nor presented with replacements.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I don't think I currently have a key to my parents' house, but that's only because I haven't got round to asking for one since last time their locks got changed. I do know where they keep the spares, so would have no trouble just walking in if I wanted to, but I wouldn't want to, really; I would always check with them first.
But I do feel free to go there whenever I want to; someone once said that home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Oh, and may I claim a kudo for "Runaway Train", by Soul Asylum?

[venta.livejournal.com]

You may have a kudo, yes :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I stopped having a key to my parents' house around ten years ago. They've never had keys to mine, either.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's interesting - I don't think I'd have nearly the same level of assumption of children giving parents keys to their house. In fact, I'm not sure I know anyone whose parents have keys. But then, I don't know many people who live close enough to their parents for it to be relevant. Possibly if you had parents popping round for social visits or babysitting or somesuch it'd be different.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

I have a key to my mum's new house, although it's not locked when she's in anyway. I didn't have a key to the house I grew up in after I left, but I knew where the spare key was hidden so it made few odds. I wouldn't just walk in unannounced; that would be impolite.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I have a key to my parents' house. Also, when the lock on the back door was changed they made a point of checking I could still get in.

And certainly my kids will always be allowed keys to our house. Although right now the Hippo is going through a bit of a keys phase. He plays with the locks on all of our internal doors. He hasn't yet locked us out of (or his sister into) any parts of the house, but I expect he will sooner or later.

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

I still have the keys to my parents' house (also the house I grew up in). I have the kind of relationship with them where they want me to know (and have explicitly stated as such) that I can "come home" (read as 'come see them') anytime I want, and so I have keys to re-inforce and facilitate that message. I like to think that when they move I'll get keys to their new place, but as they've not moved yet, only time will tell. :)

[paste.livejournal.com]

i too have a room of junk at my parents house... where else would i store all that crap i'll probably never want again but seemed to think i needed desperately! i don't have a key to their house at the moment, seems pointless as they live on the other side of the world but i used to have one, i know exactly where the spare key is, and i get given my set back whenever i am home.

i guess it really depends on your relationship & physical proximity to your parents but i'd always assumed much the same as you!

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've got a key to my parents' house. As it happens I can still remember some of the admin passwords from my first job (which I quit in 2001). I imagine they've changed them by now - and for that matter long since retired the systems they worked on - but one of my final emails at that job was pointing out that we'd not historically done a great job of changing passwords when people left.

[octalbunny.livejournal.com]

I'm currently back in my parents' house for a few months, and my stuff has officially moved in for longer than that.

On my mum's side of the extended family, all the children have keys to their folks' house. I think we all have junk at our respective folks' places too.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether I have a key or not! I was offered one, when my parents moved just over a year ago. However, on the grounds that I never visit when they're out, I think I may have refused the key. That said, I've got one on my keyring that is recent and I don't know what it fits.

Must check.

I no longer have stuff at my parents' house. I didn't have much before they moved and, as part of their moving process, they sorted out which was my stuff and which was chrestomancy's and handed this back. This was exceptionally tricky as most of the remaining stuff was books and we all read the same things.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

I don't have keys to my mums place and i guess i formaly left when they moved house and down sized, so they threw all my junk at me. Its miles away and a key would be useless really.

I do end up with keys to my fathers place ocasional, when he's away mainly and have been tempted to copy it as he's locked himself out a couple of times and i've had to break in for him...

[snathe.livejournal.com]

I've always had a key to my parents' house, although now that I live just round the corner at my aunt's house my old room is now being used mainly for storage and as a general 'dumping ground' for a miscellany of items.

My parents have always stressed that no matter what happens, we (my brother and I) are always welcome there any time. Plus, a lot of my post still goes there so I tend to call in most evenings to pick it up.

(I also think that the individual in the article needs to stop having his head stuck up his own arse, but then most newspaper columnists tend to give me that impression)

[(Anonymous)]

As a retired columnist, I can assure you my head in firmly in the clouds.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

My parents live in the house they've lived in for, gosh, 40 years now; there are about 500 books of mine still there, but only because I don't have a car to take them away in; yet I don't have a key to their house.

This was my choice: principally because I visit two or three times a year and don't want the responsibility of looking after someone else's keys. I would be somewhat hurt if they'd asked me to relinquish the keys, certainly.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I believe my mother has remarked before that if I grow up properly, get a house, and move out they won't look on it as losing a daughter so much as gaining a substantial quantity of bookshelf :)

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

I have a key to my Parents house and its generally assumed I can let myself in whenever I like. Similarly my parenst and siblings all have a key to my house and are welcome to let themselves in whenever.
But I guess not all families have such an open attitude!

[triskellian]

I still have keys to my parents' house (which they've lived in since I was four), but I'm not entirely certain where they are, and I haven't used them in years - on the rare occasions that they don't spot my arrival and stand waiting at the door for me, I ring the bell (they sometimes grumble about this). If I carried their keys, I'd feel no compunction about turning up unannounced and letting myself in - I think they'd feel it was a nice surprise :-)

My keys include the key to the room formerly known as my room (I'm not even sure if they've got a copy of that key, actually!), which has gradually been almost entirely redecorated and purged of my stuff - it's now the spare room, and where I sleep when I stay there. My brother's old room is now the study, but still contains a sofa bed, so he sleeps there rather than the 'spare room', even if I'm not around.

I didn't formally move out, but I think the last time I was there for more than three or four days was the summer between my first and second years at uni. They've been trying to rid themselves of my stuff ever since, and ocassionally find new outposts of it hiding in unexpected places ;-)

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have keys, though I never lived there, and you've just reminded me to pick them up before I go visit.

I have no room there; although my brother still does while he's at Uni.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I have a set of keys to the 'rentals. Although I'm slightly worried that in the past, I've had a set of keys in case I was in trouble and needed somewhere to stay. Now it's the case of having keys in case they're in trouble and need me to help out.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Both my parents have moved twice since I actually lived with either of them, and I've only in the last few weeks got my first key for either of them (for "feared medical emergency" purposes).

I've never thought of asking or them of offering AFAIK, basically when I visit either of them it's as a guest.

Can I beg a kudo for initially reading it as "will be required to leave his donkeys behind"?

("Get your ass out of here!" was the thought that followed.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I do habitually refer when speaking to the bits of metal which open my doors as my donkeys :)

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

My parents are still in same house (300 miles away), but they've changed the locks and I have no key¹. They have no key to here. I 'moved out' when I went to university at 18, my bedroom became my mother's office, mu junk was boxed up and gradually moved south after me, or got binned.

My parents in law recently moved, (<3 miles away) and we have a key. They have a key to here. The mutual sharing of keys is more about emergency access rather than any open door policy.


--
[1] - They didn't change the locks because I'd moved out.

[venta.livejournal.com]

They didn't change the locks because I'd moved out.

They changed the locks because you hadn't ? Blimey, that's harsh.

[quetzyl.livejournal.com]

My parents house is 12000 miles away, so I am sufficiently unlikely to turn up unaanounced that I don't have a key.

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

This is as good a point as any to jump into the conversation.

My wife and I always had keys to our parents' homes, even when we lived 12,000 miles away. This was to deal with the feared medical emergency, though when it happened I don't think we actually took the keys with us and arrangements were sorted out locally when we got back to England.

I would always expect my children (now 19, 17 and 14) to have keys to our place. My mother-in-law also has a key. So do some trusted friends who live locally.

If the boys move tens or thousands of miles away, they can keep keys. I simply ask that they don't keep them on a keyring with the address on it.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I had a key to my mum's old house, the one where I grew up, until I lost it and then wasn't given another one. I haven't been given a key to the new one where there aren't enough bedrooms for me to stay without sleeping on the floor, though if I was to stay for a few days that aren't Christmas (i.e. when there are things on or shops open I might want to go to) she would probably give me a key if I asked.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Normally when I turn up there is a cat on the doorstep waiting to be let in, now that he can't ring the doorbell with the power of his mind.

Edit to note: I think I only have a few items that lives at her house - I had to take or get rid of everything left when she moved to the smaller house. That or there is a secret bookshelf of my high school maths notes she hasn't told me about...

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I don't have keys. I formally moved out when I graduated and got a job. This consisted of loading most of my stuff into a van, and packing everything I was leaving behind into boxes. I think there are still 4 of those boxes there, and my parents occasionally make noises about bringing them to me.

I would have given them back the keys then, but I'd lost them. I found and returned them some years later.

Then again, I had semi-moved-out even before I moved out. When I went to University in the first place, my brother took my room, I moved my stuff into his room, and that room was turned into a computer room which I had whenever I was there. So I stopped having a room there that was "my own" at 18. Now that my brother and sister have moved out too, it's pretty much random who goes where when one or more of us stays. They both have shelves of books and other unpacked stuff in the house, but they don't necessarily stay in the room their stuff is in.

I think it's a bit strange when people maintain rooms in houses they don't live in, although it seems to be pretty common.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Nope, don't have keys - can't remember formally giving them back (I obviously did so - it just wasn't a significant get-thee-hence Drama or owt :) - but if I were staying with them for a few days, I'd grab a spare set for the duration.

That said, we (much like you, given your folks given a dozen miles down the road from mine) live hundreds of miles apart, so there's absolutely no use in having spare keys for key-holder purposes - and half the time when I go up to visit them I travel by train so they come and meet me anyway, meaning there's no chance of me arriving to an empty house.

OTOH, Dave has keys to his folks' house, who are equally far away - but then, we often end up spending weekends with them even further away in their caravan rather than the house, so we end up stopping off at the house mid-route instead of a service-station stop, or to break the journey overnight if the roads have been a pig.

[pm215]

I have keys to my parents house -- when they changed the lock not so long ago they gave me a new set. I think my arrangements and behaviour are broadly similar to yours.

I suppose I'd consider the point when I moved down to Reading as when I 'moved out' -- we were a bit short on bedrooms at the time so my bedroom during university holidays was the sun lounge (slightly misnamed as it faces north...). Once I was permanently living elsewhere my parents wanted the space, so I don't have an official bedroom there now. I only left a few bits and pieces there, the last of which (a rather large and heavy computer) I finally collected last year.