Keeping Privacy At Home

Post Reply New Topic

I work from an office at home. My daughter does all of her school work at home. So interruptions are fairly disruptive, plus both of us have Aspergers. Some disruptions are understandable like the USPS person needing someone to sign for a package. Others like door to door salespeople or our crazy neighbors have become a major problem.

The doorbell in the house is incredibly loud. I finally dampened it yesterday by wrapping duct tape around the chimes. It sounds rather petty but this doorbell is so loud it is physically painful. I considered disconnecting it but we do need to be able to know if we have a delivery at the door. We put up no soliciting signs a couple of years ago when we had a run of really rude door to door sales people. They were selling magazine and some sort of mystery cleaner but would get nasty if you were not interested. I had one stand on our porch screaming and swearing at me for telling him to leave.

What has been a real problem is our one set of truly crazy neighbors. Their kids have repeatedly vandalized and stolen things off of our property. We put up privacy fence on the back yard, no longer use our front yard for anything and have to keep our garage doors closed all the time. So they resorted to vandalizing or stealing landscaping.

I want to put up fence around the entire front yard with a gate on the front sidewalk. We are in the process of putting up no trespassing signs and security cameras. The hope is to deter people or at least catch them in the act if they are stealing or vandalizing. The neighbors are the type that there is no reasoning with and their kids are horrible. We are not the only people who have called the police on them or their kids for various things. They were told last year by the police after they started screaming obscenities and threats off their second floor deck to not bother us or be on our property for any reason.

So now that the weather is nice it is starting up all over again. Their kids purposely throw balls in our yard then come to the door demanding them back. This ended up being part of the police talking to them last year because they would do it as many as five times a night ringing our bell so we were constantly interrupted by these kids. So two of their kids (one is a teen) start ringing our bell last night and would not stop for about 10 minutes.

Our house is smack in between a bunch of houses with younger kids. I really wish we could move but it isn't in the cards right now. So our driveway and front yard have become the pass through/playground of the neighborhood. We have kids running across our driveway behind the cars if we pull out. I am worried someone is going to accidentally get hit.

All this BS from these people has been seriously stressful. Does anyone have other tactics to keep people off your property or from ringing your bell or otherwise intruding uninvited?

Autistic sensory sensitivities are not petty.


Help for this issue
1. Earplugs

2. White noise/sound masking machines

Don't forget the motion-sensor outdoor lighting, even if its just one. Watch the thieving cockroaches scurry.

how are the rules with animals there?
in some countries if you have a fence and a sign with ''bad dog'' is good enough to not get in trouble if someone gets bitten by the dog on your property...
it might solve the backyard problem provided you adopt a territorial dog-and not very small(no chiwuawua)
if the dog is territorial and barks a lot it will scare the kids away.

Put up fences/walls around the front yard. If zoning doesn't permit that, you could plant tall bushes.

We do have privacy fence around the back yard and a pack of big dogs. This hasn't prevented the neighborhood kids from scaling the 6 foot fence to hang over it and scream into our yard or throw garbage over it.

The motion lights are a really good idea. Those do tend to send someone fleeing as it is unexpected to have the light flick on.

it must be terribly hard to keep up with that behavior

I know some people put some sort of oily substance on their fences to prevent others from climbing them.
It's inoffensive but it makes everything that it touches very dirty and it's slippery
(it's some sort of grease- i don't know the name in english)

I ran across a really good idea last night. Someone who lived on a fenced, gated acreage had an entry gate at the road with a push button number combo lock to open the gate. So friends, delivery people like UPS (UPS has their gate code in their database) could get in but nobody else can.

No more unexpected or unwanted door knockers, door to door solicitors or the neighborhood kids. We had been considering fencing the front yard. We can put up 6 foot privacy fence as far forward on the lot as our garage. The garage is the furthest part of the house structure towards the road. So we could put privacy fence and a tall gate across the front.

The additional benefit if we add this, if someone IS ringing the doorbell we know it is someone we want coming here. No more wondering if it is going to be some weird unwanted confrontation. Sort of like screening your calls.

I realized this morning that the dynamic in our neighborhood is somewhat like an office. IE: there are people who insist on interacting with everyone else rather than doing their work

I miss the neighborhoods I lived in where people minded their own business, rarely talked but if they did it was adult and civilized. I really need to move

hope you'll find a better neighborhood

I have the same issue with the door bell in my house so what I did was set it up so that when my door bell is pressed it calls my cell and land line.

Not sure if it would do much or be even allowed with your local bylaw but in some cities I know you can add lattice on top of the fence which gives a bit more privacy.

We have a privacy fence in the back. No one comes to the front door because we have two large dogs who make their presence known both by barking (my 65# Belgian Malinois- who is formidable in her own right- sounds like a MUCH larger dog) and by looking out through the front picture window.

We had many more problems with phone solicitors than anything else. Where we live, door-to-door solicitors must have a permit, so that behavior is discouraged and not seen too often. We have a home phone but it only accepts outgoing calls. Anyone who calls on that number gets a message that "this number does not accept incoming calls." Our cell phone numbers are private and only given to people we know. I also do not answer any call unless I recognize it on the caller ID.

Overall, I think that the greatest deterrent to unwanted pesky people where I live is the dogs. Everyone who knows us knows to call ahead and not just "drop by" unannounced. Anyone who wants to visit us at home knows that the dogs live there, and they are guests. The dogs also have an uncanny ability to screen guests. Without fail, I've learned that my dogs know better than I do which people are "safe" and which people are not.

Since I love dogs-especially large dogs, and I'm more comfortable with them than fellow humans, this is an easy solution to privacy for me. I know that won't work for everyone (some people are not comfortable with dogs or can't own a dog where they live) but for me, the dogs make it easy to keep my private life private- and discourage unwanted pestering.

We have big dogs, they don't seem to deter anyone from ringing the bell though. They are not barkers. I did have someone at the door and the biggest one jumped at the storm door. He is about 5 foot 5 inches when he stands up. Having him suddenly introduce himself by standing on the inside of the door certainly dissuades anyone from trying to come in uninvited.

I changed my cell number recently and have had a couple of places be really pushy about wanting to obtain my new number. I think I need to come up with a disposable phone number or something. My daughter's clinic keeps wanting to put it into their computer system even though I have told them no multiple times. They gave my last one to their sales dept, some sort of healthcare program they promote and their auto dialer that would give me multiple phone calls always during dinner with no way to opt out.