Ten Ways to Discourage a Home Burglary

It is a wonderful feeling to be able to travel while on vacation. One of the most worrisome aspects of being away from home for weeks at a time is the possibility of a burglary ruining your homecoming. Without a properly thought out system of taking a few precautionary measures before you travel, you may as well hang a "Burglars Welcome" sign on your door.

The first step in helping your home avoid notice while you are away is to suspend your postal deliveries, newspapers, and any other routinely delivered items to your home. A growing pile of mail and papers is a sure advertisement to potential burglars that there is nobody home.

Purchasing a few inexpensive electrical timers can be put to several very effective uses for giving your empty house that "someone is home" appearance. They can be hooked up to various lights to come on and off at selected intervals. They can turn a radio or television on and off so that a casual observer would not know it was being done automatically.

Never go on vacation and leave a message on the telephone's answering machine that announces your absence from your home. It is a normal ploy to call a residence first to see if "the coast is clear." Having a message they can hear that lets them know they have days to plan the perfect crime is only aiding in the theft of your possessions.

There are mixed reviews on the idea of leaving all the drapes and shades open or shut. One can take into consideration what is visible from the outside. If you are leaving the television on, don't leave a window open so a thief can see no one is watching. You also do not want to give a "shut-in" appearance. Whether or not to leave a vehicle in the driveway, provided you are not driving it on vacation, is another contested thought on masking your absence from home. Make sure to lock any gates that open on to a patio or back yard. Putting up extra obstacles will discourage thieves from packing bulky items out of your house the back way.

If you have another person you can trust in your home you have a couple of very good options. Even if someone only comes in once a day to water plants or feed animals left at home, it will help in having someone visible there at times. They can also monitor and adjust lamp timers so a pattern from day to day is not observed. Optimally, you might be able to have a house-sitter stay at your home while you are gone and avoid having to worry about it being empty at all.

Make sure you provide a telephone number to a friend or neighbor so they can contact you in the event of an emergency. It is also a good idea to let the local police department know the dates you will be gone and if anyone is authorized to be on the property during your absence. The same information would be given to any home security company you may have monitoring your home through an alarm system.

Once all your arrangements are made and it is time to leave on that well-deserved vacation, double-check that you have all the windows and doors secured and locked. If you have installed an alarm system, be sure it is primed and set as you leave. By taking just a few of these easy preventative steps you can increase the enjoyment of your recreation time by not worrying about what is happening at home.