How to keep your home safe while away on holiday

You’re almost through your advent calendar, unless you skipped ahead and ate all the chocolate. Instead of counting down to Christmas, some of you may be counting down to the day you go away on holiday!

During the days leading up to your vacation, you should take the following into consideration to keep your home safe while you’re away.

Install smart locks

There are many benefits to having smart locks instead of traditional locks. Many smart locks activate automatically, so you never have to worry about whether you locked your doors, and you can give your neighbour, friend, or family keyless entry if you’ve organized for them to check in on the house while you’re sipping a tropical drink on the beach.

Use light timers

It’s easy to make it look like someone’s home with light timers. Set them up so the lights turn on at sunset and turn off later in the evening. Make sure you have energy efficient light bulbs so you’re not wasting too much power.

Avoid social media

All it takes is a friend of a friend of a friend, who’s probably not your friend, to see all your family photos on Facebook or Instagram and realize that you’ve left an empty home behind. As much as you want to share all your photos to make your friends and family jealous, restrain yourself until you return.

Lock up valuables

Worst case scenario, your home gets broken into. You obviously can’t hide all your valuables, but you can take preventative measures to protect your most cherished items. Unless some real professional cat burglars break into your home, odds are they won’t be able to crack your safe or make a clean getaway with the entire thing. You should put not only highly priced items in the safe but also sentimental items that are irreplaceable.

Pause your newspaper

This probably doesn’t apply to as many people as it used to, but there are still families out there that get daily and weekly newspapers delivered. The most obvious sign of an empty home is a pile of newspapers on the front step. You should either pause your delivery or ask a neighbour to pick up your mail for you.

Unplug appliances and entertainment systems

Odds are you don’t need your toaster oven plugged in while you’re away. Unplug anything that doesn’t need electricity while you’re gone. This reduces the risk of fire and it will also cut down on your hydro bill.

If you take all these things into consideration, then your home should be safe while you’re away on holiday. We also just want to throw it out there, that if you lived in a condo building, you wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. You could just lock up and leave!