Last week, I had two different people comment on the extraordinarily large number of keys I was carrying. In each case the person did a double take at the mound of keys on the table near me. Then they selected one key and raised the whole cluster of interconnected key rings into the air, as if disposing of a mouse at a dinner party. Both uttered incredulous comments along the lines of, "My gosh, you sure have a lot of keys."

This might not have made as big an impression except that my daughter recently mentioned that she always knows when I'm coming to pick her up from ballet class. Apparently the bunch of jingling keys in my hand sends an advance signal as I climb the stairs leading to the third floor dance studio.

I made a note to examine the little pieces of metal I was hefting around with me each day. When I finally did, here's what I found: six keys that I use on a regular basis, two that I need infrequently and a whopping 11 keys that are totally superfluous to my daily life.

I've been carrying around a key to the cable lock that's coiled around my bike seat but has yet to be used in the six years I've owned the bike.

I've been carrying around a key to an office building that my husband's business left six and a half months ago.

I've been carrying around the key to my sister-in-law's pop-up camper, which we use just one week every year, as well as a church key -- not a bottle opener but an actual key to our church that I used when leading a committee there last year.

Somewhere in this mess I am supposed to have a key to my parents' house, but as I look them over I can't be totally certain which one it is. Of course, if there was ever an emergency that required me to enter their locked home I'd probably save time and break the back-door window. The crisis would be over by the time I found the right key.

After laughing at myself and shaking my head at the silliness of keeping so many keys I don't really need, I set about examining other useless keys lurking in the house.

I knew just where to look. In a bag in a kitchen junk drawer I found more than a dozen old keys, including those belonging to three cars we no longer own, as well as one key tagged as the original for a house we rented for a year in Cheshire, Conn.--10 years ago.

Like weight gain and wrinkles, keys tend to just accumulate when you're not paying attention. Some of the ones found in the drawer are clearly sentimental. The rest are hanging around because I haven't figured out what they go to, so I'm afraid to get rid of them.

I'm particularly mystified by one key in particular, a brass-colored one stamped on one side with DNS in large letters and "206" in much smaller numerals. I don't have even a remote guess as to what it's for.

All this investigation of keys lead me to ponder how they work, so I checked out a great Web site called www.howstuffworks.com. There I found some helpful interactive illustrations and simple explanations of how the peaks and valleys of the key correspond to the size and position of the lower pins inside the cylinder. When everything is where it's supposed to be, the lower pins raise the upper pins and the cylinder is allowed to turn freely.

The Web site also describes how locks can be picked. This interested me because one of my favorite mysteries series features Bernie Rhodenbarr, a high-level burglar who does an awful lot of picking locks. I think reading those books was my first clue that average locks may be a deterrent to casual crime, but they are in no way going to stop someone who really wants to get whatever is being protected.

I guess that's why I've been reluctant to lock my luggage on plane trips. Knowing my track record it's more likely that I'll misplace the tiny luggage key than that someone will choose my suitcase to break into. When we went to Ireland I put safety pins through the locks and the zipper pulls, but I couldn't see myself fumbling with keys and locks as we went through customs.

Now that I've sorted out my collection of keys, I plan to carry the cars/house/work group with me at all times. Next, I'll visit relatives' houses and determine which keys go with whose houses. Those I'll leave on a separate ring and leave at home in a special place.

If I'm left with any keys I can't identify or verify, they're going in the trash.

I imagine I'll be doing this again in another 10 years, but it feels good to get a fresh start. The question is: how long before I forget my keys when I leave the house now that they don't weigh a ton and sound like a chorus of jingle bells?

Kay Hafner can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].