The Common Kitchen Staple That Can Safely Secure Your Door In A Pinch

Owning your own home means having total control over the level of security you have. Unfortunately, no matter what measures you may put in place to guarantee your safety, there's always a chance that things might spiral out of control. Alarms may fail, electronic doors may malfunction ... anything could happen. That's why it's always handy to have a few extra tricks up your sleeve, especially when dealing with a potential break-in. One neat hack you probably didn't know about is to use a fork to make your home more secure in a pinch.

You may have to sacrifice one of your good forks for this hack, but it's totally worth it to have it on standby just in case your other conventional means of security fail you. All you need for this solution is a fork, and not one that's too strong and thick. A thin, long stainless steel fork will do. This hack is helpful not just for the homebodies out there, but also for the travelers who stay in hotel rooms and need to protect themselves against security breaches.

Improving your front door security using nothing but a fork might be hard to visualize, but YouTube survival expert Burning River Bushcraft puts it all into perspective. Your first mode of action will be to break the fork so that the handle is completely severed from the head. Then, bend the tines of the fork so that the first quarter-inch is at a 90-degree angle. Open the door and place the forkhead inside the door latch so the bent tines are hanging onto it, and then shut the door. The head should be sticking out.

Take the handle and slip it through the middle space of the fork tines until it passes underneath the door handle until it's secure. To test out your makeshift lock, try to open the door. The action of the fork against the latch and the fork handle against the foot should work as a jam, preventing anyone from opening the door from the other end. Note that this hack only works if the door only opens inward. If the door swings outward, it would be useless. Next time you're home alone or you don't fully trust the locks on the hotel room door, you can pull out your trusty fork and secure yourself.