Home Security Travel Tips
Keep Your Home Safe While Travelling
Our home security travel tips will assist you to keep your home safe so you can travel with peace of mind. There are so many things to do before leaving your home vacant and we strongly advice not to leave it until last minute to secure your home.
We have divided these security tips into two categories, practical before you leave home top travel tips and home security top travel tips.
To Do List - Prior To Leaving Home
It is recommended that you go through this to-do list prior to leaving home for your holiday:
- Make sure your home insurance is up to date and covers your property adequately while vacant - some policies do not cover your home if you stay away longer than certain number of days
- Give someone a key to your house, make sure they know your travel plans and can deal with emergencies
- Ask someone to pick up your post on regular basis, ideally daily, as piles of post provide good opportunity for burglars
- If you are going on a long trip you should redirect your post to another address, e.g. to a post box or a family member or a friend
- You should still ask someone to check the post on regular basis as leaflets and other junk mail can quickly pile up
- You might want to cancel your news paper delivery, it will save you some money as well as making your absence less noticeable
- If your cell phone is on a prepaid plan make sure you have enough credit prior to travelling
- If you have pets you must arrange care for them, you should ideally do that before booking any travel arrangements
- Clean out your fridge and all food that might go off while you are away
- Dispose safely of all trash
Make sure your home is safe
while you are away
Top Home Security Travel Tips
Don't forget to plan your homecoming as well. When you have locked your house and parked your car - make sure you put your keys in save and easy to find place when you come back.
Many of us might know the feeling of searching desperately for those items the night before going back home... or worse, having to unpack our luggage when arrived at the car park
Home Security Travel Tips
No matter how much you love to travel, it's always good to come back home... as long as everything is as you left it. There are number of home security travel safety measures you can take prior to leaving home:
- If you have home alarm system do not forget to switch it on prior to leaving home, just make sure the person looking after your property knows how to turn the alarm system off and back on
- If you do not have a home alarm system, then you should consider getting one. Live Watch offers a Very Cool home security system for all budgets
- If you don't already have motion activated floodlights then you might consider installing them prior to leaving home
- You might want to install timers to control automatically lights going on and off, you can even set it on random so it doesn't go on and off at the same time every night
- You might even want to use a fake TV for extra piece of mind
- Beware of the dog signs can persuade some burglars to stay away, especially if there are more obvious signs of dog ownerships. You could leave battered dog toys in a visible place (if you don't own a dog yourself I'm sure you know someone that does and that dog is likely to be able to help you making the new dog toy battered in just few minutes)
- Adjust the heating, you might not want to turn it totally off as that could highlight that the property isn't occupied
- Turn off the water mains to prevent the risk of leaking
- Make sure no electrical equipment is left on stand-by, unplug things like your TV and computers
- Hide the things that are most valuable or important to you, don't leave them laying around for burglars just to walk straight in and pick them up. Think carefully about where to hid your things, you don't want your hiding places to be obvious
- Make sure all doors and windows are securely locked... your doors and windows are of course as safe as possible, right? Your doors should be sturdy, at least 2 inches thick and your lock should ideally be deadbolts or key locks
- Remember - Thiefs are opportunists, home security travel tips are about not giving them the opportunity to get into your home
Most local hardware stores stock simple home security travel gadgets that will help you in securing your home, such as timers for your lights and sockets, motion detective floodlights, etc.
Finally... off you go, have a safe journey
Top Home Security Travel Tips
Keep written record and take photographs of the valuables in your home. This will become useful if your property is burgled despite your home safety travel measures. It can help to identify your stolen property if it becomes located later and help when claiming on your home insurance.
Ps. you should also take care of all money matters, health related issues and travel documents well in advance of your travel date. Our Pre Travel Tips helps you to remember all the small things you must do before travelling anywhere.