March Break: Home Safety

March Break is in full swing.  School is out for a week and plans have been made to enjoy this week to the absolute fullest.  To get the most out of your March Break, here are some home safe­ty tips to make sure you enjoy a great week with­out hav­ing to wor­ry.

1. Arm your Alarm

If you’re plan­ning to take a vaca­tion or will be out of your home for a few days, make sure to arm your home alarm sys­tem before leav­ing.  The March Break is a time a year where bur­glars know that peo­ple will be out of their home, mak­ing them per­fect tar­gets for break-ins. Pre­vent them from com­ing in by arm­ing your first line of defense.

2. Secure all Access Points

To pre­vent a res­i­den­tial break in from occur­ring, make sure to secure and lock down all access points to your home.  Your doors and win­dows are all access points for bur­glars into your home, includ­ing your base­ment doors and win­dows.  To make sure no one or noth­ing enters with­out your per­mis­sion, make sure all doors and win­dows are in good shape and are strong enough to with­stand the great­est of forces.  Seal are cracks and leaks and make sure all the locks are fas­tened tight­ly.

3. You’re home.…but not real­ly

If you’ll be out of town dur­ing the March Break, try to make it look like you’re home too.  Use timed lights inside to make it look like some­one is home and use motion sen­sor lights out­side to keep your prop­er­ty well lit.  Also, get a neigh­bour or fam­i­ly mem­ber to pick up your mail and keep a car parked on the dri­ve­way.

4. Keep plans to your­self

If you’ve made excit­ing plans for the break, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like shar­ing them with fam­i­ly, friends and neigh­bours.  How­ev­er, that may not be the safest thing to do.  Try to keep your plans for the break to your­self, only telling impor­tant fam­i­ly mem­bers.  Also, dur­ing your break, try not to reveal to much about it on social media.  Crim­i­nals are always on the prowl for unat­tend­ed homes and reveal­ing online that you’re away on vaca­tion could put your home at risk.  As much as you want to share with peo­ple your trip, try to do it after you’ve returned.  Post­ing your vaca­tion activ­i­ties puts your home at a greater risk of being bur­glar­ized.

Have a great March Break!!