I’m going to add one more item to my list of decorous behavior: Invest in some really high-quality, modest pajamas and wear only those when sleeping or lounging around the house.
BECAUSE, if you come downstairs at 9:30 in the morning and find the front door is unlocked and standing wide open and you are NOT wearing decent clothes, your sense of social decency will actually be strong enough to prevent you from stepping smartly outside in full (and safe) view of the neighbors, because you are wearing that weird-ass bulgy sleeveless sweatshirt tunic you foolishly bought last year, the one that is bright orange and literally makes you look like a pumpkin with a head. So instead of pursuing the safest course while you call your husband up (who can’t at all remember closing or not closing or locking or not locking the door that morning), you have to stand inside the house where your potential thief is lurking, while you clutch a screwdriver and realize you can’t even call the police because then they would see you in your pumpkin costume.
As an alternative, you could also choose to shower and get dressed at a reasonable hour. But if you had done that, you would have been showering while your front door was standing wide open, so probably respectable PJs are best.
Don’t worry though, everything is cool now. I stuck my head into the basement and no one cut it off, and now I have this screwdriver just in case someone’s still hiding in the pantry (or the thousand other places someone could be hiding in this house). I will just sit here quite happily, not trapping myself in the shower, dressed as a pumpkin, clutching my screwdriver, until Gene gets home at five.