Holiday Tips to Keep Your Home Safe When Traveling

The holiday season is one of the busiest traveling seasons of the year. Most of us visit our friends and family for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. Unfortunately, this also opens the opportunity for your house to get broken into. If you have a dog and put it in a kennel, you have just eliminated the best security system you can have to protect your belongings. So before you leave, it's important to take precautions to keep your house safe. The last thing you want to do is come home from visiting family and friends to find out that your home has been broken into and your possessions have been stolen. The following is a list of basic security tips to help you protect your home for the holidays.

• Completely lock up your house - This may seem like a simple rule, but eliminating easy entry points for a burglar is more entailed than you think. You must consider all ways your house could be broken into, which includes the front door, backdoor, man door to garage, and all first floor windows.

• Close your curtains and blinds- Don't make it easy for thieves to scope out your house. Leaving the blinds and curtains open will only allow thieves to see what of value is in your house. If they don't know what's in your house, it may not be worth their while to break in.

• Avoid announcing you will be on vacation on social media - Thieves are savvy, they use social media to their advantage. If a thief knows your home will be vacant, you just opened the door to be robbed.

• Have your neighbors or friends watch your house- Ask your friends and neighbors to drive by your house while you are out of town. Ask them to drive by your house before and after work to watch for anything suspicious. If your friends or neighbors see anything unusual they could call the police and action can be taken immediately. Also, ask them to pick up your mail and remove your newspaper. If a thief sees your newspapers pile up on your front steps or sees mail sticking out of your mailbox for days on end, you've just invited them to break into your house.

• Security system- There is great value in having signs or stickers on your doors and windows that indicate you have a security system. Security systems deter thieves. Most security systems have 24 hour monitoring, if a thief sees this they will most likely move to the next house.

• Lights on a timer- Whether you have put up holiday lights or not, it would be a good idea to put them on a timer where each night lights come on throughout various parts of your house. This will make it appear as if you are home.

The last thing you want to do on your holiday vacation is worry about your home. It's precious time to spend with your friends, family, and loved ones. Hopefully, these simple steps will help protect your home and allow you to have a more enjoyable vacation.

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