How to Organise Keys, Codes and Access

Run the key audit first

Gather every key in the house into one place on the kitchen table. Then go and get the ones that are not in the house.

The kitchen drawer. The hook by the door. Your parent's handbag or coat pocket. The car. The shed. The one at your house. The one at your sister's. The one the neighbour has had since 2014. The one the previous care agency was issued and may or may not have returned. The spare that was cut for the gardener.

Then test each key on each lock, and label as you go with a numbered tag. Do this physically. Assumptions about which key fits which lock are wrong more often than not.

Expect two findings, both worth writing down. Keys to locks that no longer exist, which are harmless and can be discarded once identified. And locks with no key at all, which is worth knowing before the day somebody needs to open that door.

Count everything else that grants entry too, because a key audit that only counts keys misses half the doors.

• Front door, back door, side gate, garage, shed, greenhouse
• Window locks, and whether they are all the same key
• Meter cupboard and communal entrance, if there is one
• Internal locks: filing cabinet, bureau, safe, medicine cupboard
• Key safe or lockbox, and who set the code
• Car keys and spares
• Post box, and any external mailbox
• Garage remotes and gate fobs
• Alarm fobs and any door entry tag

The access log columns

One page, two tables. Print it, fill it in by hand, and keep it in the caregiver binder in the house.

The first table is keys. Columns: Key ID. What it opens. Description, meaning colour, shape and tag number. How many copies exist. Who holds each copy. Date issued. Date returned. Notes.

The second table is codes. Columns: What it opens. Where the code is recorded, which is not the same as the code itself. Who knows it. Date last changed. What triggers the next change.

That distinction is the important one. If the log lives in a locked drawer in the house and never leaves it, the codes can be written on it. If any copy circulates, if it is photographed, or if it goes in a bag that travels, the code column records where the code is held rather than the code. A binder that anyone can read is not a place for live codes.

At the bottom of the page, one line: "Unaccounted for." List anything you cannot physically confirm. That line is the reason the whole exercise is worth doing, because it converts a vague unease into a specific decision about a specific lock.

Labelling keys without giving the house away

Never write the address on a key tag. Never write "front door" on a key that leaves the building. A labelled key found on a pavement is an invitation with directions attached.

Use numbered fobs instead, ideally in different colours, and keep the mapping only in the log. Key 4 is a red tag. What key 4 opens is written in the house, on the log, and nowhere else.

Photograph the full set once, laid out on a plain surface with the numbered tags visible. That photograph lets you identify a key over the phone, which is more useful than it sounds when someone is standing on a doorstep with a handful of keys and no idea.

When a key is issued to anyone, write the date and the holder in the log at the moment of handing it over, not later. And when someone stops coming, ask for the key back and write the date it was returned in the same row. An empty "returned" column against someone who left the arrangement two years ago is a decision waiting to be made about the lock.

Key safes, lockboxes and who holds the code

A key safe solves a real problem: several people need access at different hours and multiplying keys multiplies risk. But it introduces a code, and codes spread quietly.

Keep a code-holder list. Name, organisation, date given, date removed. The rule that makes it work is simple and should be written on the log itself: the code changes whenever anyone on that list stops coming. Not eventually. That week.

Also change it after any period when a lot of people had temporary access, such as a spell of hospital discharge support, and after any incident where a key or a phone with the code written in it went missing.

Who typically ends up on the list: family, an agency's rota of carers, a private carer, a neighbour, a cleaner. Note that an agency is one entry with many people behind it, so ask the agency how they hold and share the code and what happens when a member of their staff leaves.

For emergency access, ask rather than assume. The ambulance service or the local falls service will tell you how they prefer access to be arranged in your area, and the answer varies. Ring and ask, then record what they said and the date they said it.

Digital access: what belongs here and what does not

Keep a record of which online accounts exist. Do not keep a record of how to get into them.

What belongs in the log: the provider, what the account is for, whether online access exists, the customer service number, and whether a trusted contact or third party has been formally registered.

What does not belong in a shared binder, ever: passwords, PINs, card numbers, or security question answers. If those need to be held, use a password manager and record only that one exists and who holds the master password.

There is a harder point underneath this, and it is worth being plain about. Logging in as your parent, even with their blessing and entirely for their benefit, may breach the provider's terms of service and can complicate matters later.

The alternative is straightforward and takes one phone call per provider. Ring them and say: "I would like to be registered as a third party on this account. What do you need from us?" Banks, utilities, phone companies and pension providers all have a formal process for this and staff who handle it daily. Write down what each one requires, get the document, and file it. It is slower on the first day and dramatically faster thereafter.

Keeping the log current

An access log goes stale faster than any other document in the binder, because keys move constantly and nobody thinks of it as an event worth recording.

Set two review habits.

The first is trigger-based. Update the log the same day, every time, when: a carer or agency stops coming, a key is lost, a lock is changed, a new person is given access, your parent is admitted to hospital, an agency changes, or a relationship in the family changes such that someone should no longer hold a key.

The second is calendar-based. Every six months, read the log line by line and physically confirm each holder still has each key. A text message asking "do you still have the red-tagged key?" is enough. Initial and date each confirmed row.

Anything unconfirmed after two weeks moves to the "unaccounted for" line at the bottom, and then it is a decision rather than a worry. Sometimes the decision is to change the lock. Sometimes it is to write "presumed lost, front door lock changed 14 March" and move on. Either is fine. What is not fine is a key that nobody can account for and nobody has decided about.

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