Five Home Security Tips for Holiday Times
All over the country, there are times during every year when the entire neighborhood seems to be on vacation. The winter holidays will find many families visiting relatives in different places, if only for a short time, while the summer holidays are the time when families will really get out and try to do something memorable. Either way, these two periods introduce a lot of questions to be answered on the home security front. If no one is at home, who is watching over the fort?
Homeowners who have invested in a home alarm system will be correct to believe they have gone a long way to keeping their possessions safe while on holiday. However, there are further preventive measures families can take. Here are five tips for keeping your home security plan intact while you are away.
1. Don’t let the mail and landscaping give you away. There are a variety of options on the table to keep your house from looking abandoned. Two basic tips are keeping the mail from piling up on your doorstep (have a friend or neighbor collect it) and taking care of some overdue lawn and garden work before the holiday time crunch sets in. Overgrown shrubs and high grass levels will invite unwanted guests observing your home.
2. Keep the house continuously occupied. Making the house look occupied and having it occupied are quite different. While it may not seem obvious to most people, there are always college students and other local residents who don’t get to take off for the holidays. Maybe a babysitter or friend of the family will be in town. In exchange for a place to stay, you can have someone house sit for you and add a terrific level of protection.
3. Use a light timer. All of the studies show that houses are generally robbed when homes are unoccupied. Even alarms will sometimes not scare off criminals if they know what they are after and know they can get it within a short period of time. Light timers can continue to make a house look occupied, always a great defense.
4. Replace your dog’s presence. Even if someone is watching over your dog (or if the family is bringing the pet along), you can replace that dog presence with an artificial dog barking device. Criminals will flinch at the thought of trying a house with an angry dog inside – whether there really is one inside or not.
5. Have someone available to respond to your home alarm. Even if you cannot get a house sitter, you still should have someone looking after the house in case there is an emergency and your home security company is alerted. Someone locally ought to respond and be able to reassure you that everything is fine, and then see to it that the proper help is on the way.
Related posts:
