Prepare Your Home for your Vacation!

If you are going on vaca­tion, it’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant to take some proac­tive steps to pro­tect your home.  Here are a few things to make your home appear inhab­it­ed, and foil poten­tial bur­glars. Enlist the help of trust­ed neigh­bours, fam­i­ly and friends. Here are some things you can and should do to keep your home safer.

Vis­it your Post Office and have all your mail, fly­ers, and deliv­er­ies held until your return.  Hire a ser­vice or friend to cut your grass, and main­tain your yard.  Make friends with your neigh­bours, ask them to put one of their garbage con­tain­ers in front of your home on col­lec­tion day and park a car in your dri­ve­way peri­od­i­cal­ly.

Leave a radio on, and put a main floor TV on a timer to come on each day at dusk and go off at nor­mal bed time. If you have a garage, make sure the garage doors are locked, and win­dow blinds closed. If you have pow­ered door open­ers, shut the pow­er off to the open­ers for bet­ter secu­ri­ty.  Have your out­side lights on motion detec­tion.

While it is excit­ing to go on vaca­tion and it’s nor­mal to want to talk about it…avoid talk­ing about your vaca­tion plans with strangers or ser­vice peo­ple. Avoid post­ing on social media that your are away.  If pos­si­ble use your work address for lug­gage tags so han­dlers won’t know your home address.

If you have an alarm sys­tem, nev­er can­cel or sus­pend your phone ser­vice with­out con­sult­ing with your alarm com­pa­ny about how this might affect your ser­vice. Insure your con­tact list is up to date with cur­rent phone #’s, includ­ing the emer­gency con­tact peo­ple list­ed.   It nev­er hurts to remind peo­ple that they are on your call list for the mon­i­tor­ing sta­tion.  If you don’t have an alarm sys­tem now might be the time to con­sid­er one!

Bon voy­age!