Tips on How to Keep Your Home Secure While You’re Away

When you’ve gone away either on a business trip or for a vacation, it’s always a worry about security in your home and the risk of a burglary. It’s a natural concern for everyone, whether they’ve got their personal possessions there or have a home office too.

Here are some ways to keep your home more secure when you’ll be absent for a few days at a time.

Ask the Neighbors to Collect Your Mail

You have two choices with the mail. You can either ask the Postal Service to hold your mail for you until you return and then collect from the nearest Post Office, or you can ask your friendly neighbor to pick it up for you. The mail could pop through the mail slot in your door or you could have a traditional mailbox at the end of the driveway, which will be filled up completely within a day or two if you receive many posts

Also, consider there will be random flyers and other items that if not picked up, will make it obvious that no one is home. Word gets around quickly in the criminal world when someone spots a home that looks even temporarily empty or vacant. Don’t let that be your home.

Use Smart Home or Automation to Appear to Be Home

Get a smart home service that lets you control smart light bulbsfrom an app on your phone. Companies like Apple, Google, Phillips, and others now offer these types of services. You can use the app to turn on different lights for the front driveway, downstairs rooms during the day, and upstairs ones in the evening before turning them off again around bedtime. Don’t forget if you use this kind of system, light up the back of the property too.

If you don’t like the idea of using smart devices in this way, you can always go old school with plugin timers that slot into the power outlet. A desk lamp can be plugged in and run on a timer system to automatically turn on the lamp during the daytime and early evenings. With an LED version, it’ll have a bright enough appearance from the outside.

Driveway Alarms Are Your Friend

A driveway alarm is a device designed to alert a homeowner when someone drives up to the front of the property. Depending on the system, it can send an SMS alert, a mobile device alert or an audible alert within the home itself. Or all three.

You can get one for your driveway to alert you when someone drives onto your property while you’re away. With the use of a camera pointing towards the driveway and lights that run on sensors, a camera can pick-up and record the vehicle that pulled up, including their license plate. You’ll have a recording of the vehicle and possibly the person who arrived, and you may even recognize the person or their vehicle as well.

Home Entertainment Systems

If you have a home entertainment system that you can power up and direct from an app, then it’s possible to turn on your TV in the front room and let it run on a popular TV channel or to show a movie. This provides some sound and activity in the home and makes it more convincing that someone is there.

At the end of the day, the last thing a burglar wants is to break in and discover someone is already present. Therefore, when turning on lights and playing music or a movie, it provides a strong indicator to them that they should try elsewhere. This is often enough to avoid a break-in.