Is your keychain weighed down with dozens of keys? Having so many keys rattling around can make finding the right one a hassle. The size and weight of your overloaded keychain can even make keeping them in your pocket or purse inconvenient. Be honest—do you even know what all those keys are used for anymore? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply use one key to open all your locks?

Actually, it is possible to assign one key to work with every lock in your home. Though this can make your life more convenient and lessen the burden of carrying excess keys, there are some drawbacks to using a single key for everything. Let’s examine how exactly the use of one key for every lock works and dig into some of the pros and cons for this choice.

Think of all the locks in your home. There are the front and back doors, and maybe even a side door. There could be a door that leads into your garage from the outside, and depending on the layout of your home, a door leading from the garage into the house. Counting all these possible doors, the convenience of switching to a single key is immediately obvious. When access to many individual locks can be gained with one key, those locks are said to be keyed alike.

A trained locksmith can reset your homes existing locks to be keyed alike in most cases. If your home’s various locks are spread across several incompatible brands, keying alike may not be possible. In these instances, you would need to swap out existing locks for compatible ones to facilitate like-keying.

Keying alike gives you the freedom to ditch unnecessary keys, but this system is not without drawbacks. Please consider the following before calling a locksmith for this service:

Added expense—Good high security locks aren’t cheap. If you must switch existing locks for new ones that will be compatible for like-keying, expenses could add up quickly. Be sure the added cost of new locks will be worth the convenience of using a single key.

Unlimited access—The main perk of keyed-alike locks is also one of their biggest drawbacks. A single key means anyone with that key has access to every part of your house, whereas differently keyed locks allow access in certain areas to be restricted. Suppose you give a key to a neighbor to water your plants while you’re on vacation. With a single key setup, that neighbor can now enter any part of your home. This ease of access may be more than you wish to provide in some situations.

Losing Keys—Lost keys can be a major inconvenience for a homeowner. This problem is made even worse when the key you have lost opens every door in your home. To regain peace of mind as well as your home’s security, you should hire a locksmith to change or rekey a lock in the event of a lost key. When all your locks are keyed alike, this means changing every lock in the house, which could be time consuming and very costly.

It’s a good idea to have locks in a new home rekeyed soon after moving in to restrict access from anyone who may have had a key before. If you’re a new homeowner interested in keying your locks alike, or a longtime homeowner tired of messing with a huge ring of keys, the locksmiths at Dublin Mobile Locksmiths are here to help. Contact us today to learn more about rekeying or any locksmith-related need in the Dublin, Ohio area and beyond.