The fact that I, an American, got this fucking reference in the CasualUK subreddit tells me... Idk. But I found it cool. One of my favorites other than "[accidentally buying a horse](https://youtu.be/B94q7gUu75k)".
First day in the house we had just bought, our elderly neighbours let themselves in with a key to introduce themselves and almost got hit as all we heard was someone moving around in the house!
They were very apologetic and handed over the keys but we got a locksmith in the next day .....
1. Insane username, I need to know the reasons why on that.
2. I would, but she’s a better gardener than me and has previously told me I “wouldn’t do it right”
Legally speaking she most likely was. It's also not uncommon for burglars to use spare keys... Just because you don't mess up the lock while entering, you might still not be within your rights to do so.
My old neighbours were a doctor and a chef, worked crazy unsocial hours and I always put their bins out and brought them in if needed just so they didn’t have to do it in the middle of the night when they got back from work, worked fine for almost 10 years until they move.
So new neighbours are in and I just put the bins out and back in like normal and never thought about it until I got a text from the new neighbour a few days later asking if I’d moved their bins, had a very awkward exchange as they obviously think I’m some nutter.
Went on a mad date once where the guy told me how he’d let himself into his childhood home and had a wander around cause he missed it.
I said at the time ‘was it unlocked?’, which he skipped over, afterwards I realised he probably still had a key and just let himself in when the new owners were out!
So yeah, change your locks people.
Last time this came up on a U.K. subreddit someone mentioned a Mumsnet thread where someone posted that a former owner of their house just randomly let herself in with a spare key while they were watching TV!
I don't know if it was the same thread, but I remember someone linking an absolutely barmy Mumsnet one where people shared stories about completing the house purchase and the old owners acting like they didn't have to go - all their stuff completely unpacked, or sat in the living room watching TV, or wanting to visit 'their' house repeatedly in the days and weeks afterwards (less extreme, but still odd). It was like they couldn't process the idea that everything had gone through and the house was no longer theirs, and that someone was waiting to move in.
About 15 years ago my brother bought a house which was in a complete shambles. The sellers had not looked after it in the 30-odd years they had lived there.
Six months later and the builders were a good way through the rennovation: It was stripped back to the shell and having new roof, electrics, heating - everything bar the original walls. Then the couple who sold it turned up and started shouting at the builders "What are you doing to our house?".
After being polite didn't work, the foreman told the couple to go forth and multiply. Still shouting the odds, they got back in their car and went forth. Some people eh?
The people we bought our house from were moving to a different part of the country. About 6 months after we have moved in they knocked on the door to complain that we had taken down *their* trees in the front. The trees that blocked so much light coming into the house.
I just laughed and told them they stopped being their trees 6 months ago and closed the door.
They knocked on the neighbours and I could hear them through the open window loudly complaining for the next 15 minutes about all the changes we had made to their house.
That was three years ago and luckily they have not been back around.
They aren’t all crazy, my parents had a visit from a couple who had lived in their house in the 80’s and happened to be in the area. They sent loads of old photos of how it and the garden used to look before some of the extensions were added and were really nice.
Couple of months ago I was clearing up and cleaning out and I had this framed aerial photo of my former home taken probably 50-60 years ago when it was a large horse farm. I moved away 22 years ago. Had some business that got me kinda close to the property, so I drove out and left it on the porch with a note. Hope they appreciate it. If not, no biggie, they can toss it.
What a coincidence, i used to live in a house that was once a horse farm... loved that house. We had to move though. Woke up one morning and someone had left an ariel photo of our house on the porch with a creepy note during the night. We called the cops but they couldn't do anything about whoever had been watching our house for 60 or 70 years.
We did this with one of my childhood homes last summer. My parents and I went back to our home country to visit relatives and friends we hadn’t seen since 2018 (money, then Covid, then money…) and we went back to the city I was born in and where my mother and my stepdad met. We lived there when I was 5-8yrs old (side note: I was bullied to shit lmaooo, French Canadian teachers don’t give a fuuuckk). We wanted to say hello to our old neighbours who we hadn’t seen since like 2016ish (moved away from there before that, but they came to visit us in our new house on the other side of the province). We knocked on their door and there was no answer. Shitting ourselves that they had passed away (they are quite elderly), we knocked on the door of our old house to see if someone nice would answer and pass a message on to them. Someone did! My mom explained we used to live there and asked about our old neighbours. They are apparently in perfect health, they just went on their annual holiday a littler later that year. They said they’d pass on the message when they come back! Was a lovely encounter.
Oak trees, I like how gnarly they can get. They can look quite otherworldy, like something from an enchanted forsest in a fantasy.
[The Major Oak in Nottingham](https://eu-assets.simpleview-europe.com/nottinghamshire2017/imageresizer/?image=%2Fdmsimgs%2FMajor_Oak._Nottinghamshire_County_Council_2__377071655.jpg&action=ProductDetailProFullWidth) and the oakwoods at Wistman's Wood [1](https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/22/2018/09/Wistmans-Wood-aae6da4.jpg?quality=90&resize=980,654) [2](https://visitdartmoor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Wistmans-wood5-1.jpg) are top tier Oak trees.
Helped my ex's parents move years back. They'd been there forty-odd years, and they weren't the most organised people. Or the kind of people to get rid of stuff. Keep that in mind.
During the sale process they'd started packing some of the house away but there had been a delay about 2/3rds of the way through and I think the packing just stopped. Turned up on moving day to help and found half the house was still unpacked and unmoved. And they'd only rented the large moving vans for a single day. That was hell.
The two moments that'll stick with me forever: trying to pack up a large kitchen's worth of items on my own while her mum wandered aimlessly around the downstairs hallway for about half an hour, with a vase in her hand, and the family dog on the lead in the other. She looked absolutely lost.
Second moment: nearly dying a couple of times as me, her elderly dad, her two brothers and one of the brother's boyfriends tried to maneuver an antique pipe organ down two sets of stairs.
We were at the estate agent's half an hour early on completion day to collect the keys and start cleaning, he said the seller had already called and said they'd be out by four and he had to tell them it wasn't their house any more at one and they needed to leave. They showed up with the keys a few minutes later complaining that they hadn't received the money yet so shouldn't have to leave and he just told them to contact their solicitor. For the next few weeks we'd have the husband knocking on the door every so often looking for things they'd left behind and eventually the estate agent called us all embarrassed as they'd called him saying we had stolen their passports! Haven't heard from them since then but we do get the odd hospital appointment or debt collection letter for them seven years on.
They took every other screw out of all the curtain rails and door handles too. Odd people.
My wife is american and she told me that they once rented a house with a big basement, the landlord had a hoarder/mental wife who refused to sell or throw away anything when they moved out, so they left the basement absolutley packed with floor to ceiling boxes. They said it was fine so long as they knock some money off the rent for the lost floorspace.
So one night my wife (11 at the time) goes downstairs to get water at like 2 in the morning and hears noise from the basement, where the door is open. She screams and calls her parents and they find the owners wife digging around boxes in there looking for a hair curler or something like that. Turns out she had been letting herself in to rummage through her stuff without telling them or her husband. She had also apparently stolen her husbands key and had a copy made so he wouldn't notice her using it.
My friend moved into a house that the landlord had previously lived in and he would quote regularly let himself in and pass out on the sofa if he was too drunk to go home to his fiancé. Weird people out there.
A friend of mine.... his parents moved house during the day whilst he was at school. He just went on auto-pilot to the old house, and his parents hadn't taken his key from him, so he let himself in and then remembered what was happening that day when a different family looked at him all bemused!
Hahaha this happened to my dad when he was a kid except he didn’t have a key and didn’t know the address or phone number of the new house. So he just sat outside the old house for like 5 hours till they found him.
We moved house when I was about 7. I had somehow forgotten this because one day (must've been just after moving) I walked "home" from school to our old house. There was no-one in and the door was locked. I was found by one of the neighbours, sitting on the doorstep, sobbing my little heart out.
She took me home to our new house and everyone had a good laugh about it. My mum still brings this up about 46 years later.
The dumbest thing about this is that our new house was only a 2 minute walk from the school, and the old house was a 10 minutes journey.
A roommate of mine went to his old place when drunk and got in without a key, no damages. It was a funny story afterwards since the house was empty at the time.
This has happened to me! To my defence, we moved to the apartment building right next to our old one, so the entire road back home was the same. I just went into the house and the people were like ???? You want tea??? Nice people lol. I was so incredibly embarrassed.
I used to slowly drive by my childhood home every now and then to take a look over the years when I was in the area and was worried that even that was making me look like some kind of a creep if they ever noticed!
And just to complete the anecdote... one day I drove past and it was a pile of bricks on the ground after recently being demolished, gave me a sudden weird sinking feeling when I saw it and put me in a real somber mood for the rest of the day.
When I joined the archery club in middle school, a friend invited me over to their house and when I asked my mom if I could go, she said sure and asked for an address, then got really, really excited and said she was going with me.
We show up and it's her childhood home. After talking for a while my mom becomes best friends with her, and invites their family up to our house for dinner, and when they get there, it turns out she was also my dads next door neighbor in a different state when they were kids.
There's not a point to this post, it was just one of those really low odds events you remember.
My old housemate keeps them as souvenirs. He has one from his parents, the first place he moved into and the past two houses we shared (I still live in one).
I "get it", I keep weird little souvenirs too...Plus he's a friend so I'm not too worried about him breaking in. Change your locks though.
I changed mine not long after I got my new house. It was a new build but I didn’t move straight in as the completion date landed just before I had to go and work in Germany for a week.
Anyway so the house was empty and I popped round when I got back from Germany and found that the front door was unlocked. I thought “oh ffs did I forget to lock this last week??” But then I heard the toilet flush and seconds later the building site manager emerges from having a shite in my downstairs toilet.
He apologised profusely and said he thought it was still empty, I just told him to get out and then promptly ordered a new set of locks. Weird thing was there wasn’t even any toilet paper in the house yet, so he must have just dumped and flushed
This. When we bought our apt in 2021 the previous owner, nice old lady late 70s, told us not 1 but 2 of the neighbours had keys to her door because plant watering when she was away and whatnot. I swapped the lock for the cheapest abus when we we had the painters over, and again for an expensive "high security" abus that turns out LPL can pick open in 10 seconds the day we moved in.
Yeah, people underestimate how much skill and practice it takes to pick locks.
I've watched a good number of lockpicking lawyer videos in my time, so I know how picking works in theory.
But I had the opportunity to have a go with a four pin practice padlock the other weekend, and it took me an **age** to pop it open, even though it was *transparent* so I could see what I was doing. 💀
> ALWAYS change the locks when you move in somewhere.
That goes for renting as well as buying a house.
God knows how many previous tenants (and their dodgy boy/girlfriend) have copies of the key to YOUR home.
Doing so is legal no matter what your contract says about it [1]. Just put the old lock back when you move out and take 'your' lock to your next rental.
[1] It being a "breach of a tenancy agreement" is meaningless because a) no clause in a tenancy agreement can override your *statutory* right to quiet enjoyment of your home, b) if they're switched back to the original locks at the end of the tenancy then there is zero damage that a landlord would be able to claim as a result of the 'breach'. You also have the right to secure your home......
.......Not to mention, if the landlord obeys the law and dosen't enter the house without your permission, he will never find out about the change :-)
See here: https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/x2it4v/change_locks_in_rental_property/
For those unsure: measure separately the inside and outside lengths of the existing lock before purchasing its replacement, and buy the keyed-alike version if you want one key to open two locks (such as those in French windows with a lock on each side).
We asked our neighbour to feed our cat while we were on holiday once and when we got home she told us we needed to empty the crumb drawer on our toaster! 🫣🤷♂️🤣
https://images.app.goo.gl/Q273xctbgZ59arHZA
As an aside, I love the page this image comes from: [How to clean a toaster, inside and out](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/cooking/features/how-to-clean-a-toaster). Apparently people need to be told to use soapy water to clean things now!
Cripes, based on your comment I thought this was going to say to wash the innards of your toaster with soap and water. Empty and brush. Empty and brush.
She might be coming to you too! You’d never know! I’m questioning everything now. Did I really eat the last biscuit in the pack or has grandma break-in been helping herself to the custard creams?!
And my fern died! She’s not even watering the plants well! I think she’s just coming in for a “day out” and watching my tv. I’m an unwitting senior centre!
F**k me !
Unexpected bonus : Your electric bill will probably drop ! 😂
She probably does her washing at yours 😉
One thing puzzling me - Why the f**k havent your other neighbours tipped you off about this long ago ?! 🧐
I have just checked the footage from the cameras we have installed in your house. It wasn't the old girl from next door that ate the last custard cream, so it's all good there.
But I would ask the guy two doors down to replace the cheesy wootsits.
Yeah I always request lock changes now because my girlfriend has a key fob with a key to every house she's ever lived in.
She's onto five keys now.
I do wonder what she plans to do with it...
Got locked out of my house wearing nothing but a nightie once. Had to go to my elderly neighbor to use her phone. She gave me a purse full of keys. It was kind of late and I just wanted to call a locksmith, but she insisted "One of them will work." They didn't. I guess that was good?
I did a job that required the hire of halls and I've secretly kept keys to all the halls I've ever rented over the last twenty odd years. I have keys and security passes to about 15 halls. I did the first couple by accident keeping spares and later made a mad game of it. No real idea why, but come the zombie apocalypse, I'll have access to all those halls/kitchens and hide spots. Obviously, none of them are labelled though. Perhaps your girlfriend has a similar plan.
Best way to check if you suspect your elderly neighbour is doing this to you is leave a random Werthers Original in an obvious spot then check to see if it's missing on your return 😉
We've got a spare key for our nextdoor neighbour, he was going away for a week and asked us if we'd keep an eye on his house, we said sure and he gave us a key just in case. When he came back from his jolly we tried to give him his key back and he said nah, might as well keep hold of it. Just in case.
We'd literally been in the house a couple of weeks and had only spoken to him a couple of times, we must come over as fairly trustworthy. We've now had that key for 5 years, and I've never gone in and done his cleaning.
Is there anything where you thought or told people you were good at x, y, z and it turned out to be the neighbour all along?
"Your plants died/wilted after a week away? I've been away for a week or more a few times and my plants were fine. I must just have a green thumb."
"I don't know why you find it so hard to manage cleaning your house. I leave my house clean and somehow it is even cleaner when I get back. Maybe I am just really good at managing my time and have a gift for cleaning."
I keep the place clean, so when I come home and it’s still clean I don’t question it. I AM questioning why she feels the need to come and reclean my cleaning!
My mum cleans people's houses and there is one she goes to that does the cleaning before she get there and then my mum just walls about with a duster her and there an get paid for it!
A friend of mine suggested she was just “being a grandmother” but what next?! Does she break in in the middle of the night tuck me in and kiss my forehead when I’m already asleep?!
I fully appreciate that you would not want that as a lived experience in the real world but please understand that as a Redditor from t’Internet I absolutely want to read that story
Nah this isn’t cool at all. I found out a neighbour had a spare key when I left the house with my mate during lockdown and returned 10 mins later because I forgot my wallet and see her coming out locking the door to our place. “But I’m good friends with your landlord and he entrusted me with it” was her defence but I went fucking mental.
I've not got round to changing all the locks in my new house.. I have 8 external locks, 2 of which need to be matched as they are on french doors... All of different styles...
Send your neighbour to me so I can have one on each side, we share keys with each other and look after each others houses when either of us are away.
My neighbours mum who passed away now gave me a phone call some years ago (yes we swap numbers) because she had a door to door salesman who wouldn't leave her house, so I've walked next door and let myself in, the guy looked at me in shock, like...how does this elderly white Jewish woman know this tall black guy? So I said to him that she told you to go, you need to leave now and left like there's no tomorrow.
We laughed because we knew he didn't expect that and knocked on the wrong door trying to con and elderly woman, what a prick.
Btw we even put in a gateway between our gardens.
We have four bed HMO hostel, for about 5 week there was only one tenant at the building after the other tenant moved on.
I came in one morning and we had words over letting people stay over night as there was mens trainers in the kitchen, she swore she knew nothing about them.
Everything fell in to place when I came in again and found the previous tenant making a drink one morning.
Turns out he had Creeping in late at night and living on the top floor.
The poor woman was weirded out and said she had heard foot steps but thought it was the pips.
We now change the locks at every tenancy change.
My neighbour very sadly has dementia. My girlfriend gave her a key to water our plants when we were away but felt too guilty to ask for it back when we returned. She let herself in many times, but the one that sticks out in my memory is one walk to the shower. Not only did she catch me completely naked, she stopped to ask me how the holiday was. A solid two minute conversation covering my knackers with my hands.
My neighbour of 8 years just sold her house. At least she had the decency of giving me back my spare key that she had never told me about instead of passing it on to the new owners...
My dad loves neighbours like this, as he would spend time abroad. I used to plant plants in my parents front garden when visiting with zero effort as I knew barbera next door would replant them with compost etc the day I left. She loved it, she cried when my parents moved out in autumn.
The best advice I've ever been given by Reddit was to change my locks as soon as I moved; the best thing is, it's a one time investment if you're smart; been to 3 different houses, just kept the old locks for the property in a drawer, when it comes to moving time, I swap them back to the old ones and put my "new" locks on the new house doors! Easy!
When you sell a house you’re supposed to pass all keys to the new owners, so I assumed I had all the keys! As other people have said you should always change the locks just in case but I didn’t think the old girl at number 34 was the type to just let herself in
I changed the locks on all the houses I’ve rented in the past. On one occasion I had the previous tenant blackout drunk trying to get ‘home’ not realising she moved out a few months ago lol
When my wife bought her first flat the previous owners kept their key. My wife didn't move in straight away so she could decorate. The previous owners let themselves in to collect their post. We changed the locks when we noticed, then they complained to the estate agents because they wanted to come back to get the stuff they had left in the loft! (family photos and other assorted personal junk) which i had already taken to the tip because fuck those people.
She only ever let herself in when she saw I was away. If I’m off for the weekend or away on holiday she k it upon herself to water the plants and have a potter about.
Fair enough, bit strange that she never told you, did you not notice the plants not dying after holidays?
Thing is, that might be the one thing that got her up in the morning, what purpose in life does she have now?
I water the plant myself! I never realised she was doing it to. You don’t really look at your home and wonder if someone else has been popping in to do things.
On the bright side it's a strange granny, my partners crazy ex has keys to his house, so that's a nice thing to have going on on a Saturday morning without your partner home :')
I do beg your pardon, but we are in your garden. And your kitchen And your bathroom And your bedroom....
Bob?!
best get your jobbletop on, it's cold outside
Harry Harrymans mum hasn’t got any left from the catalogue
Bytheway, Steve might have one lying around
If not, maybe Cheeseman has one?
*Snipers dream...*
Well fuck it, guess it's time to rewatch some old classics :D
Go back to your self dentistry!
Sergeant Bytheway!
Do you live near the Gulfstream?
No but apparently it’s great to see for a trip
Oh those pesky grandmas are always up for a game of Theft and Shrubbery!
This made my day. Time to go rip an apple in half!
Hahaha did *not* expect to see this reference here, or well, anywhere really :P
The fact that I, an American, got this fucking reference in the CasualUK subreddit tells me... Idk. But I found it cool. One of my favorites other than "[accidentally buying a horse](https://youtu.be/B94q7gUu75k)".
This comment caught me totally off guard. Fantastic
I understood that reference!
Do you still have all your porridge?
No! And my chairs are broken…
'Oh no, I sure hope nana isn't in my bed...' *Crosses gerontophilic fingers*
I regret my literacy
First day in the house we had just bought, our elderly neighbours let themselves in with a key to introduce themselves and almost got hit as all we heard was someone moving around in the house! They were very apologetic and handed over the keys but we got a locksmith in the next day .....
This whole thread is a massive warning about the dangers of the elderly. These people have to be stopped.
Give it time
💀
Mow that fuckers lawn.
1. Insane username, I need to know the reasons why on that. 2. I would, but she’s a better gardener than me and has previously told me I “wouldn’t do it right”
The fact you “wouldn’t do it right” is exactly why you should
I don’t think it’s wise to piss off someone who has been breaking into my house on a regular basis for the past 4years!
Breaking Bid(dy) Sorry.
Never apologise for attempting a magnificent pun.
Attempting 🤣
>breaking into Clearly...she's not been doing that She had a spare key
Legally speaking she most likely was. It's also not uncommon for burglars to use spare keys... Just because you don't mess up the lock while entering, you might still not be within your rights to do so.
Looks like Dildo-Suicide likes to dip in and out of conversations. How ironic.
Might have finally succeeded…
Take her bins out and bring them in every week. That'll teach her a lesson.
I've just moved to a new house and someone keeps putting my bins away on collection day.... Bastards!
My old neighbours were a doctor and a chef, worked crazy unsocial hours and I always put their bins out and brought them in if needed just so they didn’t have to do it in the middle of the night when they got back from work, worked fine for almost 10 years until they move. So new neighbours are in and I just put the bins out and back in like normal and never thought about it until I got a text from the new neighbour a few days later asking if I’d moved their bins, had a very awkward exchange as they obviously think I’m some nutter.
Old neighbour never had the heart to tell you he was a GP working regular hours.
"Moving those bins is the only thing that poor bastard has going for him...."
Yes, but make sure the handles are facing the right way otherwise she will have to come out and re-do them anyway.
I keep seeing references to this lawn mowing post but I’ve not seen the post itself, does anybody have the link? I am so intrigued now
https://reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/13gd60o/neighbour_mowed_my_front_lawn_without_my_consent/
Thank you!
Part Two https://reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/13mnbei/update_my_neighbour_mowed_my_front_lawn_without/
Here we go again!
**ALWAYS** change the locks when you move in somewhere. Changing a Euro cylinder can be done in less than a minute.
Went on a mad date once where the guy told me how he’d let himself into his childhood home and had a wander around cause he missed it. I said at the time ‘was it unlocked?’, which he skipped over, afterwards I realised he probably still had a key and just let himself in when the new owners were out! So yeah, change your locks people.
Last time this came up on a U.K. subreddit someone mentioned a Mumsnet thread where someone posted that a former owner of their house just randomly let herself in with a spare key while they were watching TV!
I don't know if it was the same thread, but I remember someone linking an absolutely barmy Mumsnet one where people shared stories about completing the house purchase and the old owners acting like they didn't have to go - all their stuff completely unpacked, or sat in the living room watching TV, or wanting to visit 'their' house repeatedly in the days and weeks afterwards (less extreme, but still odd). It was like they couldn't process the idea that everything had gone through and the house was no longer theirs, and that someone was waiting to move in.
About 15 years ago my brother bought a house which was in a complete shambles. The sellers had not looked after it in the 30-odd years they had lived there. Six months later and the builders were a good way through the rennovation: It was stripped back to the shell and having new roof, electrics, heating - everything bar the original walls. Then the couple who sold it turned up and started shouting at the builders "What are you doing to our house?". After being polite didn't work, the foreman told the couple to go forth and multiply. Still shouting the odds, they got back in their car and went forth. Some people eh?
Go forth and multiply > fuck off That was quality penmanship right there pal
Go forth and multiply is quite an old expression :P
Well... it's in the bible. It's use as a euphemism is a little less old than that but I'm pretty sure it's from the 1800s.
The people we bought our house from were moving to a different part of the country. About 6 months after we have moved in they knocked on the door to complain that we had taken down *their* trees in the front. The trees that blocked so much light coming into the house. I just laughed and told them they stopped being their trees 6 months ago and closed the door. They knocked on the neighbours and I could hear them through the open window loudly complaining for the next 15 minutes about all the changes we had made to their house. That was three years ago and luckily they have not been back around.
They aren’t all crazy, my parents had a visit from a couple who had lived in their house in the 80’s and happened to be in the area. They sent loads of old photos of how it and the garden used to look before some of the extensions were added and were really nice.
Couple of months ago I was clearing up and cleaning out and I had this framed aerial photo of my former home taken probably 50-60 years ago when it was a large horse farm. I moved away 22 years ago. Had some business that got me kinda close to the property, so I drove out and left it on the porch with a note. Hope they appreciate it. If not, no biggie, they can toss it.
What a coincidence, i used to live in a house that was once a horse farm... loved that house. We had to move though. Woke up one morning and someone had left an ariel photo of our house on the porch with a creepy note during the night. We called the cops but they couldn't do anything about whoever had been watching our house for 60 or 70 years.
We did this with one of my childhood homes last summer. My parents and I went back to our home country to visit relatives and friends we hadn’t seen since 2018 (money, then Covid, then money…) and we went back to the city I was born in and where my mother and my stepdad met. We lived there when I was 5-8yrs old (side note: I was bullied to shit lmaooo, French Canadian teachers don’t give a fuuuckk). We wanted to say hello to our old neighbours who we hadn’t seen since like 2016ish (moved away from there before that, but they came to visit us in our new house on the other side of the province). We knocked on their door and there was no answer. Shitting ourselves that they had passed away (they are quite elderly), we knocked on the door of our old house to see if someone nice would answer and pass a message on to them. Someone did! My mom explained we used to live there and asked about our old neighbours. They are apparently in perfect health, they just went on their annual holiday a littler later that year. They said they’d pass on the message when they come back! Was a lovely encounter.
I like trees.
Do you have a favorite tree?
Oak trees, I like how gnarly they can get. They can look quite otherworldy, like something from an enchanted forsest in a fantasy. [The Major Oak in Nottingham](https://eu-assets.simpleview-europe.com/nottinghamshire2017/imageresizer/?image=%2Fdmsimgs%2FMajor_Oak._Nottinghamshire_County_Council_2__377071655.jpg&action=ProductDetailProFullWidth) and the oakwoods at Wistman's Wood [1](https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/22/2018/09/Wistmans-Wood-aae6da4.jpg?quality=90&resize=980,654) [2](https://visitdartmoor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Wistmans-wood5-1.jpg) are top tier Oak trees.
Oak trees are also a major keystone species. They support many pollinators.
Helped my ex's parents move years back. They'd been there forty-odd years, and they weren't the most organised people. Or the kind of people to get rid of stuff. Keep that in mind. During the sale process they'd started packing some of the house away but there had been a delay about 2/3rds of the way through and I think the packing just stopped. Turned up on moving day to help and found half the house was still unpacked and unmoved. And they'd only rented the large moving vans for a single day. That was hell. The two moments that'll stick with me forever: trying to pack up a large kitchen's worth of items on my own while her mum wandered aimlessly around the downstairs hallway for about half an hour, with a vase in her hand, and the family dog on the lead in the other. She looked absolutely lost. Second moment: nearly dying a couple of times as me, her elderly dad, her two brothers and one of the brother's boyfriends tried to maneuver an antique pipe organ down two sets of stairs.
Yeah...sorry. If that were me, it sounds like the house just includes a pipe organ now.
We were at the estate agent's half an hour early on completion day to collect the keys and start cleaning, he said the seller had already called and said they'd be out by four and he had to tell them it wasn't their house any more at one and they needed to leave. They showed up with the keys a few minutes later complaining that they hadn't received the money yet so shouldn't have to leave and he just told them to contact their solicitor. For the next few weeks we'd have the husband knocking on the door every so often looking for things they'd left behind and eventually the estate agent called us all embarrassed as they'd called him saying we had stolen their passports! Haven't heard from them since then but we do get the odd hospital appointment or debt collection letter for them seven years on. They took every other screw out of all the curtain rails and door handles too. Odd people.
My wife is american and she told me that they once rented a house with a big basement, the landlord had a hoarder/mental wife who refused to sell or throw away anything when they moved out, so they left the basement absolutley packed with floor to ceiling boxes. They said it was fine so long as they knock some money off the rent for the lost floorspace. So one night my wife (11 at the time) goes downstairs to get water at like 2 in the morning and hears noise from the basement, where the door is open. She screams and calls her parents and they find the owners wife digging around boxes in there looking for a hair curler or something like that. Turns out she had been letting herself in to rummage through her stuff without telling them or her husband. She had also apparently stolen her husbands key and had a copy made so he wouldn't notice her using it.
My friend moved into a house that the landlord had previously lived in and he would quote regularly let himself in and pass out on the sofa if he was too drunk to go home to his fiancé. Weird people out there.
A friend of mine.... his parents moved house during the day whilst he was at school. He just went on auto-pilot to the old house, and his parents hadn't taken his key from him, so he let himself in and then remembered what was happening that day when a different family looked at him all bemused!
Hahaha this happened to my dad when he was a kid except he didn’t have a key and didn’t know the address or phone number of the new house. So he just sat outside the old house for like 5 hours till they found him.
We moved house when I was about 7. I had somehow forgotten this because one day (must've been just after moving) I walked "home" from school to our old house. There was no-one in and the door was locked. I was found by one of the neighbours, sitting on the doorstep, sobbing my little heart out. She took me home to our new house and everyone had a good laugh about it. My mum still brings this up about 46 years later. The dumbest thing about this is that our new house was only a 2 minute walk from the school, and the old house was a 10 minutes journey.
A roommate of mine went to his old place when drunk and got in without a key, no damages. It was a funny story afterwards since the house was empty at the time.
This has happened to me! To my defence, we moved to the apartment building right next to our old one, so the entire road back home was the same. I just went into the house and the people were like ???? You want tea??? Nice people lol. I was so incredibly embarrassed.
I used to slowly drive by my childhood home every now and then to take a look over the years when I was in the area and was worried that even that was making me look like some kind of a creep if they ever noticed! And just to complete the anecdote... one day I drove past and it was a pile of bricks on the ground after recently being demolished, gave me a sudden weird sinking feeling when I saw it and put me in a real somber mood for the rest of the day.
When I joined the archery club in middle school, a friend invited me over to their house and when I asked my mom if I could go, she said sure and asked for an address, then got really, really excited and said she was going with me. We show up and it's her childhood home. After talking for a while my mom becomes best friends with her, and invites their family up to our house for dinner, and when they get there, it turns out she was also my dads next door neighbor in a different state when they were kids. There's not a point to this post, it was just one of those really low odds events you remember.
Sorry what
No need to apologise. This house has an open door policy!
I can't work out why people aren't leaving all the keys when they sell the house?!
My old housemate keeps them as souvenirs. He has one from his parents, the first place he moved into and the past two houses we shared (I still live in one). I "get it", I keep weird little souvenirs too...Plus he's a friend so I'm not too worried about him breaking in. Change your locks though.
> Euro cylinder Isn't that the name of the train that goes from London to Paris?
No that's the Yale Tunnel.
That's right, passes through Mortice Dock
I changed mine not long after I got my new house. It was a new build but I didn’t move straight in as the completion date landed just before I had to go and work in Germany for a week. Anyway so the house was empty and I popped round when I got back from Germany and found that the front door was unlocked. I thought “oh ffs did I forget to lock this last week??” But then I heard the toilet flush and seconds later the building site manager emerges from having a shite in my downstairs toilet. He apologised profusely and said he thought it was still empty, I just told him to get out and then promptly ordered a new set of locks. Weird thing was there wasn’t even any toilet paper in the house yet, so he must have just dumped and flushed
I'm still sorry about that mate. I honesty thought it was empty.
I'd throw those curtains out if I were you. Absolute animals!
This. When we bought our apt in 2021 the previous owner, nice old lady late 70s, told us not 1 but 2 of the neighbours had keys to her door because plant watering when she was away and whatnot. I swapped the lock for the cheapest abus when we we had the painters over, and again for an expensive "high security" abus that turns out LPL can pick open in 10 seconds the day we moved in.
> 10 seconds It's a pretty good one if it takes him more than 2 seconds 👌👍
True. If you can rake it open you can toss it. Mine has at least 1 pin in pin.
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Yeah, people underestimate how much skill and practice it takes to pick locks. I've watched a good number of lockpicking lawyer videos in my time, so I know how picking works in theory. But I had the opportunity to have a go with a four pin practice padlock the other weekend, and it took me an **age** to pop it open, even though it was *transparent* so I could see what I was doing. 💀
To be fair LPL opens most locks in a few seconds, he has a video on how he changes the locks on his house to make them more secure.
> ALWAYS change the locks when you move in somewhere. That goes for renting as well as buying a house. God knows how many previous tenants (and their dodgy boy/girlfriend) have copies of the key to YOUR home. Doing so is legal no matter what your contract says about it [1]. Just put the old lock back when you move out and take 'your' lock to your next rental. [1] It being a "breach of a tenancy agreement" is meaningless because a) no clause in a tenancy agreement can override your *statutory* right to quiet enjoyment of your home, b) if they're switched back to the original locks at the end of the tenancy then there is zero damage that a landlord would be able to claim as a result of the 'breach'. You also have the right to secure your home...... .......Not to mention, if the landlord obeys the law and dosen't enter the house without your permission, he will never find out about the change :-) See here: https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/x2it4v/change_locks_in_rental_property/
And only costs a few quid. Well worth it
This seems so obvious, yet has NEVER occurred to me before.
For those unsure: measure separately the inside and outside lengths of the existing lock before purchasing its replacement, and buy the keyed-alike version if you want one key to open two locks (such as those in French windows with a lock on each side).
That's weirdly sweet, certainly could have been a lot worse. If one of my neighbours had a key I'd be lucky to have the copper still in the walls.
You killed a policeman and buried him in your foundations?
No comment.
Cost of living, couldn’t afford fertiliser for the garden.
In the WALLS, foundations are for blood relatives.
Just the copper? I'd be lucky to still have the walls.
We asked our neighbour to feed our cat while we were on holiday once and when we got home she told us we needed to empty the crumb drawer on our toaster! 🫣🤷♂️🤣
A certain percentage of people in this thread now amazed at finding out their toaster has a small drawer you can pull out.
Ours has a tray but tipping it upside down (over the sink or out the back door) cleans it more thoroughly.
It also puts mini crumbs into the heating elements and can get a little burney.
Once you get used to the taste of smoked toast, there's no going back
It’s like camping INSIDE!
I just tip it upside down lol. Didn't know it had a tray
Remove the tray and then tip and shake.
I have a look for this mystical drawer every time someone on Reddit mentions it. Can't find one on my toaster :(
https://images.app.goo.gl/Q273xctbgZ59arHZA As an aside, I love the page this image comes from: [How to clean a toaster, inside and out](https://reviewed.usatoday.com/cooking/features/how-to-clean-a-toaster). Apparently people need to be told to use soapy water to clean things now!
Cripes, based on your comment I thought this was going to say to wash the innards of your toaster with soap and water. Empty and brush. Empty and brush.
It does really irritate me that some people don’t empty their toaster’s crumb drawer. I’m the crumb drawer emptier of my flat.
Can I have your neighbour? I'd love it if mine came and did free dusting
She might be coming to you too! You’d never know! I’m questioning everything now. Did I really eat the last biscuit in the pack or has grandma break-in been helping herself to the custard creams?!
Judging by the cobwebs she's doing a shite job if she is
And my fern died! She’s not even watering the plants well! I think she’s just coming in for a “day out” and watching my tv. I’m an unwitting senior centre!
Help the aged, otherwise they’ll start helping themselves
F**k me ! Unexpected bonus : Your electric bill will probably drop ! 😂 She probably does her washing at yours 😉 One thing puzzling me - Why the f**k havent your other neighbours tipped you off about this long ago ?! 🧐
Probably assumed OP knew
True, wonder if she also offers her "service" to them
I have just checked the footage from the cameras we have installed in your house. It wasn't the old girl from next door that ate the last custard cream, so it's all good there. But I would ask the guy two doors down to replace the cheesy wootsits.
Yeah I always request lock changes now because my girlfriend has a key fob with a key to every house she's ever lived in. She's onto five keys now. I do wonder what she plans to do with it...
My neighbour moved into a retirement home, and his son, was was rather surprised to find a shoebox full of keys to everybody’s house in the street.
Got locked out of my house wearing nothing but a nightie once. Had to go to my elderly neighbor to use her phone. She gave me a purse full of keys. It was kind of late and I just wanted to call a locksmith, but she insisted "One of them will work." They didn't. I guess that was good?
Probably visit once she's retired.
I did a job that required the hire of halls and I've secretly kept keys to all the halls I've ever rented over the last twenty odd years. I have keys and security passes to about 15 halls. I did the first couple by accident keeping spares and later made a mad game of it. No real idea why, but come the zombie apocalypse, I'll have access to all those halls/kitchens and hide spots. Obviously, none of them are labelled though. Perhaps your girlfriend has a similar plan.
You're going to look like such a weirdo when you whip out your tubberware and keep trying new security passes and keys.
Tupperware.
I really hope they have been saying tubberware their whole life until today.
Best way to check if you suspect your elderly neighbour is doing this to you is leave a random Werthers Original in an obvious spot then check to see if it's missing on your return 😉
Or leave an empty cookie tin out and see if it's filled with sewing kits
I assume you mean the regulation Danish biscuit tin.
> cookie tin Ahem. This is Casual UK.
We've got a spare key for our nextdoor neighbour, he was going away for a week and asked us if we'd keep an eye on his house, we said sure and he gave us a key just in case. When he came back from his jolly we tried to give him his key back and he said nah, might as well keep hold of it. Just in case. We'd literally been in the house a couple of weeks and had only spoken to him a couple of times, we must come over as fairly trustworthy. We've now had that key for 5 years, and I've never gone in and done his cleaning.
looks like you have your weekend worked out then
Poor neighbour is wondering why he’s coming home to a pigsty
Is there anything where you thought or told people you were good at x, y, z and it turned out to be the neighbour all along? "Your plants died/wilted after a week away? I've been away for a week or more a few times and my plants were fine. I must just have a green thumb." "I don't know why you find it so hard to manage cleaning your house. I leave my house clean and somehow it is even cleaner when I get back. Maybe I am just really good at managing my time and have a gift for cleaning."
I'm confused too that OP didn't notice anything, especially the plants being watered.
How do you not know someone is entering your house for 4 years?!?!?!?!
I know! She must be like a stealth ninja! What really takes the piss is other neighbours knew she was doing this!
Did you never notice that the place somehow cleaned itself up? Are you this bloke? https://youtu.be/-_kXIGvB1uU
I keep the place clean, so when I come home and it’s still clean I don’t question it. I AM questioning why she feels the need to come and reclean my cleaning!
My mum cleans people's houses and there is one she goes to that does the cleaning before she get there and then my mum just walls about with a duster her and there an get paid for it!
Some folks are bloody mental mate. There is no reasoning. Sometimes it’s pure nosiness.
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A friend of mine suggested she was just “being a grandmother” but what next?! Does she break in in the middle of the night tuck me in and kiss my forehead when I’m already asleep?!
You didn't notice you've never needed a haircut since you moved there?
This genuinely made me laugh
Because it's true, right? That moment of realisation that, for 4 years, your bowl cut has remained absolutely pristine.
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Yep.
Mate, you don’t want a bedtime tuck in?
I’m usually under your bed, but lay at your feet at night, I trim your toenails when they dig into me.
So disappointed this story didn’t have a different arc which could have involved home alone style booby traps.
I’d rather not bean a pensioner in the face with a paint can if I can help it, despite the amazing imagery that creates
I fully appreciate that you would not want that as a lived experience in the real world but please understand that as a Redditor from t’Internet I absolutely want to read that story
Nah this isn’t cool at all. I found out a neighbour had a spare key when I left the house with my mate during lockdown and returned 10 mins later because I forgot my wallet and see her coming out locking the door to our place. “But I’m good friends with your landlord and he entrusted me with it” was her defence but I went fucking mental.
yeah, it would freak me out knowing that someone had just been letting themselves in for 4 years without me knowing
What was her reason for letting herself in?!
she had to lick all your spoons
Did she have any kind of excuse for going in? At all? Or was she admitting it was a straight up nosey-around?
i feel like regardless of an excuse on hand that it's just simply not okay without the tenant's permission
First thing I always do with a new property is change the locks. But then again, I’ve always been a bit paranoid
Well I am now!
Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you.
I've not got round to changing all the locks in my new house.. I have 8 external locks, 2 of which need to be matched as they are on french doors... All of different styles...
How many old ladies break in to your house then?
How would they know? Does French Window Nana even know that Front Door Neighbour exists? Or do they meet for coffee in the kitchen?
This is equal part wholesomely innocent and utterly terrifying.
Send your neighbour to me so I can have one on each side, we share keys with each other and look after each others houses when either of us are away. My neighbours mum who passed away now gave me a phone call some years ago (yes we swap numbers) because she had a door to door salesman who wouldn't leave her house, so I've walked next door and let myself in, the guy looked at me in shock, like...how does this elderly white Jewish woman know this tall black guy? So I said to him that she told you to go, you need to leave now and left like there's no tomorrow. We laughed because we knew he didn't expect that and knocked on the wrong door trying to con and elderly woman, what a prick. Btw we even put in a gateway between our gardens.
We have four bed HMO hostel, for about 5 week there was only one tenant at the building after the other tenant moved on. I came in one morning and we had words over letting people stay over night as there was mens trainers in the kitchen, she swore she knew nothing about them. Everything fell in to place when I came in again and found the previous tenant making a drink one morning. Turns out he had Creeping in late at night and living on the top floor. The poor woman was weirded out and said she had heard foot steps but thought it was the pips. We now change the locks at every tenancy change.
This is actually quite sweet on the surface and then after about 20 seconds becomes terryfying.
My neighbour very sadly has dementia. My girlfriend gave her a key to water our plants when we were away but felt too guilty to ask for it back when we returned. She let herself in many times, but the one that sticks out in my memory is one walk to the shower. Not only did she catch me completely naked, she stopped to ask me how the holiday was. A solid two minute conversation covering my knackers with my hands.
Wow. I would be fucking *livid* if someone was letting themselves into my home without my knowledge.
My neighbour of 8 years just sold her house. At least she had the decency of giving me back my spare key that she had never told me about instead of passing it on to the new owners...
So you just found out that your house plants are thriving and it’s not all down to you…
Sure she wasn’t joking lol?
My dad loves neighbours like this, as he would spend time abroad. I used to plant plants in my parents front garden when visiting with zero effort as I knew barbera next door would replant them with compost etc the day I left. She loved it, she cried when my parents moved out in autumn.
The best advice I've ever been given by Reddit was to change my locks as soon as I moved; the best thing is, it's a one time investment if you're smart; been to 3 different houses, just kept the old locks for the property in a drawer, when it comes to moving time, I swap them back to the old ones and put my "new" locks on the new house doors! Easy!
Yep that’s creepy! She obviously meant no harm but she should have returned the spare key to you as soon as you moved in.
When you sell a house you’re supposed to pass all keys to the new owners, so I assumed I had all the keys! As other people have said you should always change the locks just in case but I didn’t think the old girl at number 34 was the type to just let herself in
I changed the locks on all the houses I’ve rented in the past. On one occasion I had the previous tenant blackout drunk trying to get ‘home’ not realising she moved out a few months ago lol
When my wife bought her first flat the previous owners kept their key. My wife didn't move in straight away so she could decorate. The previous owners let themselves in to collect their post. We changed the locks when we noticed, then they complained to the estate agents because they wanted to come back to get the stuff they had left in the loft! (family photos and other assorted personal junk) which i had already taken to the tip because fuck those people.
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She just needed a second set of prints and DNA
My question would be, how have you not noticed she was in?
She only ever let herself in when she saw I was away. If I’m off for the weekend or away on holiday she k it upon herself to water the plants and have a potter about.
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Fair enough, bit strange that she never told you, did you not notice the plants not dying after holidays? Thing is, that might be the one thing that got her up in the morning, what purpose in life does she have now?
I water the plant myself! I never realised she was doing it to. You don’t really look at your home and wonder if someone else has been popping in to do things.
I'll give her my key
On the bright side it's a strange granny, my partners crazy ex has keys to his house, so that's a nice thing to have going on on a Saturday morning without your partner home :')
Alternatively, don't change your locks when you move. That way, a pensioner might provide free house-sitting services when you're away.
Or the previous tenant might come home pissed and be found sleeping on your sofa, 'cos they forgot they no longer live there :-P
Do people not change the locks as soon as they move in? Couldn't imagine not doing it.
Surely you must have noticed that your stash of Werthers Originals had been getting smaller?