How Many Spare House Keys Should You Actually Have?

Most people either have zero spare keys or a mystery drawer full of them with no idea which is which. Neither is ideal. Here is a practical way to think about how many house keys you actually need and how to keep them from becoming a security risk.

Start with who genuinely needs daily access

Every adult who lives in the home should have their own working key. That is your baseline. From there, think in terms of roles rather than people:

• One key per resident who comes and goes.
• One trusted backup, kept off site.
• One optional spare for a caregiver, cleaner, or pet sitter, only if you truly need it.

For most households, that lands somewhere between three and five keys total. Beyond that, you are usually just adding keys you cannot account for.

Where to keep the backup

A spare only helps if it is somewhere safe and reachable. Good options:

• With a trusted neighbor, family member, or friend nearby.
• In a quality lockbox mounted out of sight, with a code you control.

Bad options: under the mat, in a fake rock by the door, or on top of the frame. Anyone who has ever been locked out has checked those spots, and so has everyone else.

A spare key hidden in an obvious place is not a backup. It is an open invitation.

When to stop cutting keys and rekey instead

Here is the trap. Every time you hand out a key and it does not come back, you lose track of who can open your door. If you have cut keys for past roommates, contractors, or an ex, cutting one more does not fix the problem.

At that point, the smart move is to rekey your locks. Rekeying resets your locks so every old key stops working, and then you cut a small, known set of fresh keys. You go from an unknown number of keys floating around to a clean count you actually control.

Keep it simple

Cut the keys your household genuinely needs, store one safe backup off site, and rekey whenever the list of keyholders gets fuzzy. We can duplicate keys on site at your home, so you skip the hardware store trip entirely.

Need a few spares cut or your locks rekeyed to one key? Jorge brings the equipment to you.