"Check your home insurance policy before you leave on vacation. Some have a clause that requires that the premises be checked every 48 hours in your absence for the policy to be valid.
"Arrange for someone to come in once or twice a day and take in the mail, open curtains in the morning and close them at night, and cut the grass.
"Illuminate dark corners of the yard with motion-sensing floodlights, replace burned-out bulbs on exterior light fixtures, install inexpensive motion-sensing lights near entrances, garage doors, walkways and porches.
"Place landscape lights, porch lights, a few interior lights, and a radio on different timers so it looks - and sounds- like somebody is home.
"Stop newspaper deliveries before you leave. Most newspapers have vacation stop/start forms on their websites.
"Invite your neighbors to park their cars in your driveway to give the illusion of people coming and going.
"Garages and garden sheds can provide a thief with the necessary tools to break in your home. Keep them locked and ensure ladders are locked up and out of reach.
"Leave an itinerary, a phone number and a house key with a trusted neighbour so they can contact you if something goes wrong with your house.
"And finally, bolt patio doors and install deadbolts on all exterior doors and interior doors leading to the garage, basement or solarium. The deadbolt should be at least an inch long and the strike plate should be secured into the door framing stud.
If your home is broken into, you may have to do a major overhaul on your home. Household items can be broken, stolen, and sentimentally irreplaceable. Suffering this set back, you may have to renovate your current home as a result of breaking and entering. Furthermore, you may have to move to a completely new home to avoid any future incidents.
Follow these tips prior to leaving for your vacation, each tip will prove vital to keeping your home safe for the remainder of your leave. You will rest easy knowing you took precaution from having all your valuables taken away from you.
