You are three minutes down Buford Highway, merging toward Suwanee Town Center, when the thought arrives uninvited: did the front door actually lock? You picture the handle under your hand, the click you assume you heard. You cannot actually remember hearing it.
That gap between an action and the memory of it has a name. Psychologists call routine motions like locking a door “automatised behavior.” The brain performs these actions so often it stops filing them as distinct events — the same way most drivers cannot recall braking at a stop sign they cross every morning. This habit protects your attention, but it leaves nothing to check against once you are already on the road.
You are not the only one turning the car around. In a 2025 survey of American households, smart home security company Vivint found that 62% of respondents had driven away and gone back because they could not remember whether they had locked up. Seventy-four percent said someone in their household had forgotten to lock a door at some point during the school year, and 47% had left the garage open before heading out. The worry is common enough to be a pattern, not a personal lapse.
Turning Around Isn’t the Fix — Checking Remotely Is
Driving back solves that one morning. It does not solve the structural problem: the only way to know was to be standing at the door. Every future departure starts the same replay, because there is still nothing to check against except memory.
What people actually want, once you ask them directly, is not a better memory. They want the ability to check the door lock remotely, from wherever they already are, instead of turning the car around. Researchers at ICF put this to the test: their 2024 study, presented at the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, asked smart home device owners which single benefit they valued most.
Remote control came out on top. 73% of respondents in one survey, and 82% in a related survey of connected-device owners, named it the feature they valued most. People are not chasing gadgets. They are chasing the two seconds it takes to look at a screen and know.
The New Homeowner Checklist for Leaving Home in Two Minutes
A leaving-home checklist does not need six steps or a magnet on the fridge. It needs one screen, checked once, before the car leaves the driveway:
Front door. Displays locked or unlocked — a status, not a guess. Some smart locks also offer auto-lock, re-securing the door on their own a few minutes after it closes, which is worth asking about when you tour any home that claims to be smart.
Garage door status. Open or closed. In the same Vivint survey, 47% of households said someone had left theirs open before heading out for the day.
Away mode. One setting that shifts the thermostat, the lights and the door lock together, instead of four separate apps.
Doorbell camera. A quick look at who is standing at the door after you have already left.
Notification. Some systems will also flag it automatically if a front door stays unlocked past a set number of minutes, so the reassurance does not depend on remembering to open the app at all.
That is the entire routine. Two minutes, one screen, before the garage door closes behind you — not an app to hunt for at a red light.
Where This Actually Lives in a Suwanee Townhome
At Young Creek, that single screen is a wall-mounted tablet inside the entry, standard in every townhome rather than an upgrade you request. The Building 1 & 2 standard townhome runs four bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and 2,807 square feet across three floors, with a two-car garage on the entry level. From that one screen, the tablet controls the garage, the smart lock and the thermostat — mounted between the garage door and the stairs, exactly where you pass on the way out. Young Creek wires the lock, doorbell and thermostat in at closing, with no separate monthly monitoring fee to add before any of it works.
The bedroom suite on that entry floor, next to the garage, means the person leaving earliest does not have to walk past anyone else to reach the tablet. It is a small detail that only matters at 6:40 on a school morning, which is precisely when it matters most.
The Check Happens in the Driveway, Not on the Highway
The technology is not really the point here. What matters is where the checking happens. Move the moment of certainty from three minutes down Buford Highway back to the driveway, and the worry has nowhere left to attach itself. That is what smart home security peace of mind looks like in practice: a shorter distance between the worry and the answer, not a bigger system to manage.
Every finished townhome at Young Creek ships with this same tablet, wired in at closing, not added after — run the checklist yourself and schedule a tour to see available townhomes.
