So my place(that I’m currently renovating) is a large one room studio loft. There isn’t a room or a closet I can lock supplies and such. I am adding a stacking washer/dryer with a linen closet type cabinet next to it. I have been reading here that locking up my supply of TP, paper towels, laundry detergent and such is a good idea. My target guest is usually a couple for a weekend getaway, so I plan to leave an extra roll of paper products and maybe one detergent pod in the space but want to secure the rest.
I found this refrigerator lock that I was thinking may work on a cabinet. Has anyone used anything similar?
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I use a cable bike lock with a key for one place and a lockable steel office cabinet in another.
Have you already bought the cabinet? If so do you have a picture of it?
What you have linked above would work. There might be a more elegant looking solution available but drilling or cutting pressboard IKEA might be a mess. A padlock hasp bent at a 90 degree angle might work and depending on one’s tastes, be more aesthetically pleasing. The only other thing I can think of would be a box of some type that locks if you have anywhere to store it.
You don’t need to overly-secure your storage cabinet, as if it were Fort Knox.
Go to any hardware store and choose a simple metal hasp to mount onto the cabinet doors. Then decide if you want a key-lock or a combination-lock. I would suggest a combination-lock, if there is an urgent need for more supplies from your guests that you can text or phone the combination code to them.
If you are not “mechanically-inclined” with tools, ask a skilled friend or handyman to install the door hasps.
If guests break-open your locked cabinets, you could file an Airbnb damage claim. But I doubt a guest would burglarize your storage cabinet for paper towels or laundry soap.
You could also label the outside cabinet doors to indicate what is inside; so guests won’t think you are storing diamonds and gold coins.
P.S.: I noticed your photo of the refrigerator door-lock. That is for a metal surface and not a wood-cabinet surface. Anyone could use a thin, flat knife to pry-off the round sticking surface seen in your photo. You need a metal hasp that screws into the wooden doors.
Or, if you don’t want to assemble a tall storage cabinet and metal hasps, you could buy a $73 “foot locker” from Target in several color choices. Its rectangular-box is: 12.25 inches (H) x 30.0 inches (W) x 15.75 inches (D) that could store basic cleaning products and has a built-in locking hasp.
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I think it’ll work fine on that Ikea cabinet as long as it’s a smooth surface and not the stuff with the faux wood grain. You could always take a drill and put two holes right through each of the two circular anchors and the cabinet and then insert 3/16" carriage bolts to re-inforce them. It’s really not necessary, though. You just want to keep guests from casually opening the cabinet, not preventing them from breaking in.
Still, like everyone says, a simple hasp will be cheaper and more secure, but probably a little more work to install.
I like the idea of putting a small label that says something like “Cleaning supplies. No guest access.”
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You might check with IKEA, This article implies they might have their own smart lock.
A few options on Amazon:
And one from Home Depot:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Prime-Line-9-16-in-Dicast-and-Steel-Stainless-Steel-finish-Drawer-and-Cabinet-lock-U-9943/100124186
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It looks like you’ve got several good suggestions on this thread.
I’m the radical voice. I don’t lock mine up. Nothing significant has gone missing…may be a bit of TP over use. For some people a lock means something valuable is inside so alluring to get into.
Don’t lock it.
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How about those magnetic child locks where the handle is a magnet that you remove and take with you? It might not take a Guest too long to figure it out but if they did it would be a deliberate thing.
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Thanks all! I’m not terribly worried about people stealing my supplies, although it would annoy me for sure. I have heard of multiple instances though, where guests have tried to be “helpful” and clean up a wine spill or something and ended up ruining furniture or linens with bleach or something.
I’m putting the cabinet in regardless so maybe I’ll not bother with a lock and see how it goes.
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I have a lock on my closet but it isn’t locked most of the time. When I do lock it guests sometimes try to open it and they’ve both scratched the door with the pin lock and popped the door completely off the track. I have all my spare linens, pillows, blankets and some supplies in that closet and to my knowledge nothing has gone missing. Consumables like coffee, tea and snacks probably would get wiped out at times and so they are in my part of the house.
Some things I kind of wish they would take like the 170 individual wrapped soaps I’ve had for 3 years. LOL.
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Yeah I use these, My cabinets have french doors so I needed 12 of these just for the bathroom. They look awesome because you can’t see them from the outside. The metal hasps and cable locks all don’t look as nice.
Guests will definitely help themselves to whatever they can find if it isn’t locked up. The magnetic locks aren’t a security measure so much as a privacy measure. It lets guests know this stuff isn’t for them. I don’t even take the magnet with me actually. I leave it in the bathroom and so far I haven’t had an issue.
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I leave supplies at all the houses. No one has taken any yet. I did have one guest who took an afghan but when I asked about it they said their mother took it by mistake and they mailed it back.
I leave soap products, cleaning products and paper products and no one yet has ever used more than they should have.
If these are truly non-valuable items, you could go simple and use magnetic child locks. We did this on one of our pantry doors in our kitchen (as I did not want to drill into the front of them). We hide the magnetic “key” so that we and our cleaner knows where it is, and put a sign that says “owner storage, no guest access”. Could guest “break into it”? Yes, absolutely, and probably pretty easily, it’s just a plastic lock. But we haven’t had any issues so far. I also keep a set of keys hanging inside the door to our actual closet upstairs with a true lock and key, on the offhand our cleaner or our HVAC guy needs to enter up there.
I use the Jambini Magnetic Cabinet Locks, found on Amazon. What you have seems like it would work great too though.
i think its not a good idea to have a locked up cabinet or storage or something lol. most of them will get curious whats inside. 
In some instances I think it could be OK to leave things unlocked, but in a property such as mine it could be expensive. I have a 5 bedroom home that can accommodate up to 13 people, we store bed linens as well ash approximately 35 towels in our maids closet. If a guest got in there and started using towels and linens at their own will we could end up with 35 dirty towels and a lot of dirty sheets. We provide 1 towel per guest, and clean linens for each bed in the house, the guests have access to a washer and dryer onsite, but are told ahead of their stay that they should bring laundry soap if they would like to wash anything. I have very clear instructions that we provide just one towel per guest. We also provide 2 rolls of toilet paper per bathroom per day (we have 2 bathrooms) this should be more than enough even with 13 guests. We do not provide paper towels, as I had guests going through 3 rolls in 2 days (or taking left overs home) we now tell them ahead of time we do not provide them. If my guest had access my biggest issue would be the laundry time for my cleaning crew, I pay $20 per hour for cleaning, the extra laundry that access could create could easily cost $60 extra dollars in cleaning time for wash dry and fold of that many towels.
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Robin,
We have a 5 bedroom house and do almost the same thing as you for the same reasons with a few minor exceptions. We provide 1 roll of paper towels on the counter and 1 jug of ‘dollar store’ laundry detergent. The comments/questions for not adding these things by guests was getting tiring.
Rick
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I understand it’s annoying to have guests take home extras but it really seems like a better solution would be for hosts to price in the cost of supplying ample toilet paper (what, a dollar a day?) You don’t discount if someone uses less and over time it evens out. I stayed in a multimillion dollar home this summer and we paid about $800 a day to rent it. We were there a week and I was afraid we would run out. And we had to hunt for the spare TP, move rolls from one bathroom to another and I messaged the host. For an extra $10 out of a $5000 booking the host could have appeared generous instead of penny pinching.
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I have never had someone run out of toilet paper, 4 rolls per day is enough for any group I would have, and if they used more than that I think I would have a septic issue. C