How to Keep Your House Secure While on Vacation

During summer trip season, use these suggestions to protect your home and to make your home seem occupied. These steps may discourage burglars and thieves.

Install quality locks on doors and windows. It is true that an intruder who really wants to get into your house probably can find some way, but most burglaries are crimes of opportunity committed by small time thieves. This means that the harder you make it for someone to enter your house, the more likely it is a burglar will not make the attempt.

Install motion detector lighting and dummy security cameras on the outside of your home, or consider real closed circuit TV. Use automatic timers on inside lights and day/night switches on outside lights. A week or two before you go, set your timers so you can establish a routine while you are still home. There are even timers available that can vary the on/off times. Periodically have a radio or TV turned on.

Don't leave valuables where they can be easily seen from the windows. Video equipment, TVs, stereos, gun collections, etc. should be stored in basements, closets, on the second floor, or left with a family or neighbor. Equipping a storage room with a good deadbolt lock makes a safe storage area too. Leave your drapes in the normal position. Have a neighbor close them at night and open them in the morning, or use sheers. Sheers help to obscure the view into the house without making it obvious, as drapes would, that no one is home.

Put at least two lights and a television on automatic timers. Leave the bathroom light on with the door ajar to add to the impression that someone may be home. Close and lock your garage doors to prevent someone from breaking in through the garage. Consider putting a padlock in the track of overhead garage doors. Also, attached garages that are not kept locked provide the opportunity for an intruder to get into the garage and work in privacy at breaking into your house, maybe even with the help of your own tools!

Cover your garage windows to prevent anyone from seeing the inside of your garage and see whether your car is at home. Check your homeowner's insurance policy- does it provide robbery coverage while you're staying in hotels and motels? It should. Don't let your travel plans be widely known.

Try to arrange for a house-sitter, but if you can't, provide your immediate neighbors a card with your important information. If you are to be gone for an long period, you may want a trusted neighbor to:

-Check the house daily for anything unusual.

-Park in your driveway or in front of the house.

-Occasionally place garbage in your garbage can.

-Cut the lawn.

-Pick up your mail and newspapers.