Traveling over the summer is something that many of us want to participate in. Summer break is the perfect time to explore and to go to different far away destinations because you can take your online class work with you, or you’re able to take time off work much easier than miss classes like you would be during the school year. Before you go off unprepared, however, it’s important to think about the safety of your home before you leave.
Pets
For the safety of your pets and your belongings, it’s important to arrange for them to be taken care of while you’re gone. Whether it’s a dog, cat, hamster or snake, they need to have a person there feeding them, keeping them company and making sure they’re living in healthy conditions while you’re off traveling. It’s good to reach out to people months before your trip and to confirm in follow ups with the house sitter to be certain that they will be there for the time that you won’t be.
House Locks
No matter what sort of locking or security system you have, it’s important to make sure that not one lock goes missed, and if you do have a security system, make sure it’s activated before you depart on your adventure. Most people think that if you lock the doors, it’s good, but you should really make sure that all the windows—even the ones upper stories of your house—and doggie or cat doors are also locked. Although it seems unlikely that someone would break into your house using a ladder to climb into the second story of your house, it’s better to prepare for any and every scenario.
Neighbors
If you don’t know your neighbors yet, a good thing to do before you leave for your trip is to go around the neighborhood offering up sweet treats to build that relationship. If you’re comfortable with your neighbors, alerting the people who live near you that you’re planning on going out of town can add extra guarding eyes on your home. If your neighbors know when you’re going out of town and you ask them to keep an eye out for any suspicious behavior around your house, your neighborhood will be much more aware of your home’s security.
Valuables
If you can, another good thing to do is to lock up your expensive and valuable items. Some things you might want to lock and hide are jewelry, family heirlooms and electronics. If you don’t already have one, invest in a lock box and hide it in a very obscure place. There are some things that are impossible to bring with you and easy to hide such as a large TV, however, this luckily means that they’re also hard to steal. It’s said that burglars go for top drawer of dressers when rampaging because that is where people usually store their most valuable items. Therefore, if you’re hiding your possessions, store them in the middle or bottom drawers instead.
