Keeping Your Home Safe While Traveling! (#3 Is A Game Changer)

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Don’t leave home without reading these genius ideas for keeping your home safe while traveling!

Want to keep your home safe and secure while you’re away on vacation?

Keeping your home safe while traveling is all about making your home less desirable to burglars and removing obvious temptations. Also, a home that looks occupied is less likely to be vandalized!

Do you remember the movie “Home Alone?” It actually provided a lot of funny, yet helpful ideas for making your home more secure.

I’ve got some really clever tips to share with you today. Be sure to read my tip #3, it’s a real game changer…

Keeping Your Home Safe While Traveling:

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1. Don’t Announce Your Travel Plans on Social Media

This is probably the easiest way to keep unwanted people away from your vacant home. With how publicized all the social media platforms are, you don’t want any less-than-friendly “friends” knowing about your specific travel dates and vacant home! 😉

2. Remove Your Key from Underneath Your Doormat or Other Possibly Obvious Hiding Locations

Have a spare key placed underneath your doormat or some other possibly obvious location? These are the first places many burglars look before breaking in, so it’s a wise bet to remove that key and put it somewhere safe inside.

3. Tell a Close Friend or a Trusted Neighbor You’re Leaving

For good peace of mind, have a close friend or neighbor of yours whom you can trust stop by your house once a day and make sure everything looks normal. Having someone regularly coming and going from your house is a great way to make your home look occupied. Are you going to be gone for more than a few days? Try asking your trusted friend to housesit. You can tempt them with free food and a quiet house!

4. Invest in a Safe

Locking up your most valuable possessions such as your jewelry or electronics in safe is a good idea. Most burglars move fast, so anything you can do to make your valuables harder to grab good. Don’t make it easy for those bad buys. 🙂

5. Stop Your Mail

A heaping pile of mail is a very obvious sign that you’re gone, so don’t forget to fill out an online form stopping your mail before you go! Got a newspaper subscription? Make sure to stop that too!

6. Ask Someone to Collect Your Packages and Fliers

Those packages and fliers piling up on your driveway are screaming, “Come rob me!!” Again, having a friend or neighbor swing by to pick up any fliers or packages will make it appear like you are home and picking them up.

7. Put Your Lights on Timers

Don’t leave your lights on all day when you’re gone – that’s a clear sign to burglars that you’re not home. Besides, why pay for the electricity if you don’t need to. Instead, invest in some light timers and set them to your normal schedule. Do you turn your dining room lights on a 6:00 PM? Maybe you turn your living room lights on at 7:00? This trick will send potential thieves off their tracks! 😉

8. Place a Wooden Dowel in Your Slider

Sliding Glass Doors are a common entry point for burglars coming into your home according to my Phoenix police officer friends. Burglars usually enter in by prying the sliding glass door open. It is actually one of the easiest ways to break into any home. A genius, and low cost way to secure this entry point is by laying a wooden dowel in the tracks – then, the door can’t be pried open.

9. Padlock Your Gate

Padlocking your gate is potentially the easiest way to secure your home. By doing this, you are successfully eliminating a large percentage of lazy burglars who want to do a quick smash-and-dash.

10. Secure Your Doggie Door

Your doggie door is a vulnerable point of entry for many burglars, so don’t forget to lock it up before you leave.

11. Double Check Every Door and Window

It seems pretty obvious, but before leaving home, remember to do a last walk around checking the locks on all your doors and windows. If your garage is connected to your house, don’t forget to lock the door between your garage and house as well.

12. Keep Your Snow, Pool, and Lawn Service Coming While You’re Gone.

It’s always nice coming back home to a tidy yard, but for safety reasons, this is a great tip as well. If everyone on your street has their driveway plowed or lawns mowed nicely, and your yard is beginning to get overgrown, then that is a sign for burglars that you’re not at home. Also, if your landscaper or pool guy is coming each week, this is another set of eyes keeping tabs on your home.

By following a couple of super easy tips, keeping your home safe while traveling is really easy! Now that you’ve scored these tips for keeping your home safe, be sure to read these related home and travel tips below…