Your vacation should be a time to break free from your daily worries, not worry about someone breaking into your home. From timer switches to in-home monitoring systems, there’s a wide range of devices that can keep your home just as secure as it would be if you were there. Keep things looking lively – A home that looks unoccupied is a sitting duck for burglars, but small signs of life are often all you need to deter the thieves. Close the curtains in rooms with large valuables, such as your TV. In other rooms, leave the curtains open, but put smaller valuables, such as laptops and gaming consoles, out of site. Put lights on a timer that switches them on and off at random times. Hire someone to collect your mail or, if you’ll be gone for more than a week, have your mail suspended. Having someone mow your lawn helps, too. Lock up tight – Before you leave, check your whole house for weak points of entry you can bolster. Skip this step and you risk coming home to find someone has slipped in through that attic window you forgot about and made off with your grandmother’s jewellery. Even adding simple window bar locks and patio security bars can save you a lot of grief. Replacing an old bolt lock with a keypad lock improves security and gives you a way to let a friend in to check on something without the need for spare keys. Upgrade to an in-home monitoring system – Having the chance to see for yourself what’s going on around your home can give you more peace of mind than you’d enjoy even with a monitored security system. Wifi-enabled in-home monitoring systems let you do that with security cameras you can watch from your smartphone and sensors that will message you when something’s up. If someone’s traipsing through your backyard, you’ll be notified so you can pull up the camera to check whether it’s a suspicious prowler or just the neighbour’s kid retrieving their ball. While hiding your valuables and not letting mail pile up goes a long way toward preventing break-ins while you’re on vacation, in-home monitoring systems can give you the extra sense of security you need to really enjoy your time away.
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