![[Keys vs. Keys]](http://wearehugh.com/public/2004/08/keys.jpg)
I dreamed my whole family moved into an abandoned bookstore. We each kept our money in a different cash register. We converted the staff lounge to a bedroom. We installed showers in the restrooms. We used the store-within-a-store Starbucks as our kitchen. We put deck chairs on the loading dock. We used the bookshelves for books.
I remember disliking this setup, because I needed an extra key for my cash register. I measure the simplicity of my life by the number of keys I am forced to carry around on a daily basis. This is not part of the dream; this part is real.
Right now I have two keys, a car key and an office key. I use both on a regular basis, as I commute to work in an office. Removing either key would require major lifestyle changes. I could get a new job that didn’t include an office. I could work at home full-time. Or something equally drastic. None of these is desirable.
I used to carry a Club key around on my keychain, and of course I had a Club in my car. I used it every day, especially when I was parking at the train station and taking the train into the city every day for work. When we moved to North Carolina I used it once or twice, in the mall parking lot. I was the only one. People looked at me funny. Now I keep the Club key in the car, and the Club in the trunk, and I haven’t used it in three years except when I used to drive up to Washington DC to go teach for Apple. I don’t do that anymore. I kind of miss that. But on the plus side, I have one fewer key to carry around.
I used to have a mailbox key, but now I have a real mailbox that doesn’t need one.
I used to have two additional keys, one to get into my apartment building and one to get into my apartment. Now I have a single house key, which we only use to lock up when we go on vacation, so I don’t carry it around on a daily basis. We lock up at night, but of course that doesn’t require a key because we’re inside already.
Technically I suppose I have three keys, since I have a keycard that’s required to get into my office building. Everyone in IBM has a keycard, so getting rid of that would require changing employers or retiring, neither of which is desirable.
Someday I’ll retire. Someday I’ll be too old to drive. If I don’t complicate my life in other ways first, I may die without any keys.
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Hmmm, I basically do the same thing. I hate carrying a multitude of keys.
I have the two to get into the apartment and my car key. Though I live in the city and don’t drive much anymore, I would feel a little less freedom if I didn’t have ready access to the car. I probably just need to let go.
I have a few more than both of you do (maybe six or eight), but that’s not too bad.
We could all be a lot worse off though: we could be janitors that have to carry huge rings of keys with them everywhere we go.
I understand the appeal of a low key count — I once lived in a location where we were able to leave the car keys in the ignition at night, and the house had no locks. I only had my office key, that I needed to keep track of. Now I have two office keys, a bike key and a house key. Still not bad.
There was a time when I as well had only two keys. At one point, I even had no keys. To my surprise, this is less than desirable. Having no keys terrified me. The empty spot in my right pocket where keys once had been had to be filled, but with what? Finally, I gave in and started carrying a couple keys around just to fill the spot. Eventually, I got a car and had to start carrying a “real” key for a “real” purpose.
Two to three keys is the most desirable. Anything less and I go crazy, anything more and I get annoyed.
What’s a Club and why does it need a key?
No club that I can think of (night-, golf-, chocolate-biscuit-called-) has a key associated with it…
— Confused Chris 
from Wikipedia:
“The Club is trademark of a popular automotive steering wheel lock produced by Sharon, Pennsylvania based Winner International.”
You can see a picture of it on Amazon.
— Martey
The Club is an automotive theft deterrent that attaches to a car’s steering wheel and, theoretically, prevents a would-be theif from taking a car whose steering is diabled.
In reality, the thing is about as effective as a Lhasa Apso as a guard dog. Or maybe those bogus rocks you rub under your arm so you don’t realize you forgot to deodorize.
At least that’s what I heard.
— Nathaniel Winn
I have two key-rings. The first (and primary) ring contains the key to my condo (only one), and the key to my car (only one). This I keep on my person whenever I am outside. This ring also includes a nifty platter spacer from a dead hard disk. In the centre console of my car, I keep the second key-ring. It contains my mailbox key, keys to my father’s house and my rental property in Pittsburgh, and those bloody stupid ’savings’ tags for the local grocers: Harris Teeter, Kroger, Food Lion. I don’t shop at Winn-Dixie, Aldi’s, Lowe’s, or any of the other 10,000 grocers in the Triangle area. I also have a tag for the Wake County Public Library, but I don’t know why, since the darn thing won’t stay put on the automated check-out kiosk. I really do have too much junk on my rings, but I only carry the first, so I don’t fee so burdened.
The relative effectiveness of The Club has been discussed here before. Simply, it is most effective in cases where you are parked next to a car of equal value which does not have a Club.
— Mark
“No, it’s just– I– You know, I just think, right now I have *one key*, you know, everything I own is in the car, and I just… I like that; you know, I mean, I just– if I get an apartment, that’s two keys, if I get a job, you know, um, I might have to open or close, that’s more keys…”
– Graham (James Spader) from “Sex, Lies, and Videotape”
What? No PGP?
beautiful site
— Anonymous
It’s nice to see I’m not the only person who doesn’t like having too many keys, I like to limit mine to 3 — home, car and letterbox. It’s weird though, that people look at me strangely when I suggest that they should try reducing the number of keys they carry. They say they need them all even though they’ve got about a dozen keys on 2 or more linked key rings. I just think to myself… yeah right! As if you open that many doors every day.
I just realised I have almost no keys. I work from home, can’t drive and normally when I leave the house, I’m with my husband and he carries keys, so I don’t. Thanks Mark; you’ve made my day.
— Somewhat
When I worked in a college, having a huge bunch of keys was a Good Thing. It was a status symbol, the more keys, the greater your sphere of influence (the Principal was an exception, like the Queen and cash). I made it up to about a dozen. Rattle, rattle. It was also incredibly useful - think stationary cupboards. At the time I also needed car keys, house keys and crooklock (aka Club) keys.
Nowadays I don’t normally carry any keys. I only use the car maybe once a week, working at home (if the wife and I go anywhere together, usually she drives). If I take the dog out for a long walk I might lock the front door and take the key, but again that’s only maybe once a week. Generally it’s safe to leave the door unlocked if I’m not away too long. Aside from simplicity, this brings a bonus when you’re good at losing keys - not getting locked out.
btw Mark, how many passwords do you carry?
— Danny
No keys in my pocket; most of the time one of my parents, one of my three lil’ brothers or my sister is at home, so basically I don’t need keys for home. Sometimes nobody’s home, and I have to wait for a couple of hours. But I’d rather wait in the garden once a month (with a laptop and wifi) than adding this unnecessary complexity to my life.
I have few keys. My problem is passwords. I’m too security-conscious to use the same one twice. The only real way to simplify my passwords is to use fewer services.
— Joel
I have four keys and one of those keyless entry things. My keys consist of my car, the wife’s car, house key and utility key (swiss army knife like contraption). I hate the fact that the wife’s key is this huge key that houses some kind of computer lockdown thing. I like the security but damn the thing is so big. I too like to have my key count around 3, I just wish the remote dongle could operate both cars.
— dru
I have four keys. Two of them are useful - the key to my apartment and my car. The other two are almost completely useless (my luggage and my filing cabinet), but I keep them on my keyring so I won’t lose them. In theory, I’m supposed to have a key to my office, but they’ve never given me one, and it’s a great excuse not to come in early.
— Jeni
I have seven keys, and I use four of them on a regular basis. The three that don’t get much use are the key to my wife’s car, and the keys to the parents’ houses(mine and my wife’s). My other keys are for: My house, car, filing cabinet, and mailbox.
Oh, and I have an electronic key for my office building, and a keyless entry doodad for my car.
— kiswa
So why did you stop teaching at Apple? Full-time work, right?
Anyway, I carry two keychains (real, not computer-based) one for life and one for work. They trade places inot and out of my messager bag on work days so I only have one set on me at any given time. I too have my club in my trunk now. I should remove the key from my ‘life’ keychain and put it in my glove box for when I want to use it….
> So why did you stop teaching at Apple? Full-time work, right?
I work for IBM now.
— Mark
I have 7 keys, an electronic key for the alarm at work and a bottleopener. I need to open two doors (2) to get inside my apartment, I usually also need to park my bike (3) and check the mailbox (4). So basically I’m using four keys to get in my appartment. Unless I want to use the front door of the building (I use the backdoor to get my bike in the building) because that one has a different lock (5).
So that’s five. I need another one to lock the bike (6) and yet another one to park the bike in the secured area at work (7). The electronic thingy allows me to get to my desk. And the bottle opener makes it self useful far too often not to carry :-).
I have a really handy keychain though from the moma museum in New York. Basically it’s five small rings that are docked to a central disc. Basically this keychain is way too cool not to carry all your keys around. You can take each of the five rings off which is nice if you need to borrow some keys to someone or if you want to take only the bare essentials with you (like when traveling)
— Jilles
I have this friend who is a night watchman. He carries alot of keys. How he wishes he could only carry two or three Mark. “That would make life easier”, he tells me.He works for a complex organization. They do research and design and run this business from the same complex. Now, my friend is not stupid he realizes what others do not. That these keys represent different lock sets. Each lockset has different features and different levels of security. Hell he even has to remember key codes for locks that have no keys. He knows he needs these keys if he wishes to make his nightly rounds and make sense of others
security rules. Accounting has their own lockset. R&D has there own lockset. The computer people have there own lockset mounted on the left side of the door instead of the right! Inside of the computer room those key codes I was talking about guard the mainframe. It is confusing so he serialized all those keys to the locksets. Now his life is less complicated yet still complex. he just made a little more sense of the imperative chaos created by humans. This might be off topic but you know data is ubiquitous but the lockset er a I mean encoding and translation is local.
I love the way you think….
I have the opposite problem. I have only two keys, but a multitude of keychains. Attached to my two keys are an old Corona bottle and can opener, a almost torn in half plastic FedEx truck, a plastic city bus, and a brand new plastic replica (in minature) of the Sears tower with Chicago written across it. My grandmother swears that such a heavy keychain will result in the ignition of my car falling out.
http://authentic-strivectin.com
Counting keys on my keyring, I have 6 - plus a usb ‘key’.
I am the KEYMASTER! Recently it dropped, but I had 3 car keys, house key, mailbox key, garage man door key, bedroom door key, parent’s house key, safe box key, bicycle lock key, 3 keys for work. Hmmm, I’ve got one more that I’m not sure what it’s for. I have 2 more keys for my file drawers at work, but I don’t really need to lock them. If I could get down to two keys I’d be thrilled.
I have Phil beat. 17 keys on my personal keyring, and three on my work key ring.
Here’s the breakdown:
Work:
Two to unlock the back door and security door
One to unlock the front door
I also have the alarm code memorized.
Personal:
Front door of the house: 2 keys + duplicates
Back door of the house: 1 key
Gates to back yard: 2 keys
Garage: 1 key
Car: 1 key
Club: 1 key, but the club is sitting in my garage, so I should stop carrying it.
Guest house: 2 keys
Garage to guest house: 1 key
Mailbox: 1 key
Son’s bike: 2 keys
Mom’s house: 1 key
If you think that’s bad, I have probably double that many passwords, although I have started closing accounts because I can’t remember the answers to some of my secret questions any more. It was about 50, and I’m working toward 10.
— Walt
Two keys. Life is good. The key to my truck, which I only have to drive once a week to work since going to 4 days a week working from home. The key to the man-door on the garage. That gets me into my home office. I realized that the garage is the best place to work. Nobody, and I mean nobody bothers me there, well, except the neighbor who also has a garage which is an extension of the living space of his house, and the cat, who doesn’t visit me too often since the high stool that I sit on kindof freaks her out. I don’t even carry those bloody grocery store discount cards, what a scam, I use my phone number. If I were smart, I invent a device to encode all those discount cards on a single custome card that would work in everyone’s scanner, cool uh? Then I would maybe carry 3 keys.
— Badkins
I have two keys for my house and a magnetic card for my office. I take the bus everywhere in the city and the train elsewhere. I’d be more worried that I was in Starbucks frankly.
— mattl
During my years in San Diego, I had a ton of keys. To be honest, I didn’t know what 3/4 of them were for. I just knew they were for something - enough of a something that it wouldn’t be prudent to get rid of them.
Life is simpler, now: building, apartment, laundry room, mail.
By the bye, your dream reminded me of an episode of the Twilight Zone (the one where the man that likes to read is the last person left in the world).
— April
http://www.fireland.com/box/000676.html
— josh
“I may die without any keys.”
And then you will win!
(I carry nothing on me. I only wear a shirt, jeans, underwear, and socks.)
Underwear? Socks?
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