You’re all set and read to go for your next big adventure. Your bags are packed, your itinerary is ready, you have booked all your ticket… but have you thought about how to keep your home safe when you are away?
I remember my first long term trip, which led me around Asia for about 2 months. I have been living in my own flat for about a year before I left to Asia and the thought of letting it empty for so long was worrying me. So, I gave the key to a friend and she passed by every 1-2 days, to check that everything was all right, to feed and play with my cats and to water my plants. But what do you do when you can’t find anyone to look after your home when you are away on holiday?
Talk to your neighbours
Letting your neighbours know that you will be away for a while, no matter if it’s for a couple of days or one month, it’s a smart thing to do. They can pass by your house from time to time and collect your mail. The piles of envelopes and magazines do attract attention that nobody is home. Also, they can keep an eye and notice suspicious people.
Ask a friend to house sit
This is the best way to make sure that your house is safe while you are away on your dream holiday. A friend will not only look after your house, but they will also water your plants, pick up your mail, sign for packages, and turn the lights on in the evening, making it look like it’s you who’s home.
If you don’t have any friends available you can always find a trusted house sitter online, on websites like trustedhousesitters.com or mindmyhouse.com. Here you have the option to choose from a large selection of people who are interested in looking after someone’s house in exchange for free accommodation. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. Of course, always choose someone who already has positive references. My go for number of references is 3+, all from recent hosts. To join one of these websites you need to pay an annual fee which varies between 20$ to 60$.
Install a professional home security system
More and more homes these days have home security systems installed and no wonder, with the number of burglaries increasing. I have such an alarm system installed and I always turn it on when I leave my house. It has sensors on all the doors and windows and if someone tries to break in, it takes 45 seconds for the evaluation team to send a guard response intervention.
Not to mention, these days, the home security systems are so advance that they can detect pet movements as well and not trigger the alarm if your furry friend is left home alone.
A house that is protected by an alarm system will also have a warning visible somewhere on the façade. This by itself discourages thieves to try to break into your property.
Install a video camera activated by motion
It is very easy these days to buy a cheap camera and install it outside your home. Most of these cameras have WiFi and can connect to your home internet connection. They also have a dedicated channel which you can access on your mobile, from anywhere you are in the world.
A camera that is motion activated will send alerts to your phone as well, so you can take immediate action.
Check the privacy of your social networks
It is very tempting to post on Facebook or Instagram that you are going on holiday. But if you leave your home empty, make sure that you have changed all your privacy settings from public to private. Sure, it’s lovely to post photos from your dream vacation and keep your family and close friends updated with your itinerary. But they should be the only people who see them, not the entire internet.
There have been many cases in which families have been on holiday, only to return to an empty home, without any valuables in it. Just because they posted on social media that they were away!
Not to mention, your insurance company might not compensate you if your house gets broken into whilst you are away, if you posted on social media. There is a clause in any home insurance contract that refers to “reasonable care” of the property. When you post on social media photos from your holidays you are also telling everyone indirectly that your house is unoccupied, which breaks this clause.
Don’t close the curtains
It might be instinctual to close the curtains when you go away on holiday, but this is a clear sign to potential robbers that you are not home. If you usually keep your curtains open, they leave them as they are when you go on holiday. Of course, don’t leave anything valuable in plain sight, but we will get to that in a minute.
Even if you live in a flat at a superior floor, having your curtains pulled for several days in a row will attract attention. And it’s so easy to access a residential building these days, pretending you are a courier or the postman.
Unplug your electronics
One advantage of turning off the electronics in your home when you are away is the savings you will make to your electricity bill, that can go towards your next adventure. The second advantage is protecting your appliances from power surges that can occur during stormy weather.
You should unplug all the electronics except for the fridge and freezer. If you are traveling in winter, leave the boiler plugged in, on a timer. If the temperatures are dropping below 0, your pipes might freeze and burst, so it’s important to have the heating on, even if it’s on a minimum.
Don’t forget to turn the water supply off as well (except for your boiler, in winter). You don’t want to come back to a flooded house.
Sliding garden windows?
Do you live in a house with garden sliding doors? I do, and when I moved in I did wonder why there was a piece of wood fitted at the bottom, where the door slides. Then I figured it out!
Sliding doors are beautiful and let a lot of light into the house, but they are also very easy to open. They have small locks which can be broken very easily, even when you are a little bit more brutal with the key in.
But when you put a piece of wood, or metal, or anything else that’s long enough on the bottom rail, it blocks the door from opening, even if it’s unlocked. Do not underestimate the power of DYI!
Don’t leave your valuables lying around
If you are living in a house or in a ground floor flat, make sure you are not leaving your laptop or any valuables in sight. Anything that can be seen from outside, through the window, can make your home a potential target. Put your laptop inside a cupboard and invest in a safe, for any jewellery or other small valuables you might have.
Did I miss anything? How do you protect your home when you go on holiday?
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I travel a lot, so I really appreciate this valuable advice. A few simple changes, or just a conversation with a neighbour as you say, can make a world of a difference.
These are some great ideas, the last thing you want to be doing when travelling is worrying about back home! We always let our neighbours know and have our cameras set up and fully charged as well.
These are some fantastic tips for keeping your home safe while traveling! I never thought about the curtains! That’s so interesting and helpful
Leaving the house while on holiday is a bit of a worry for me. I would have to have my brother house sit for me otherwise I would go nuts!
My husband and I travel for work and we always tell our neighbors when we are gone. I think it’s important to do so as well. You cannot be too safe these days.
Great tips! We do have a security camera and neighbors who will watch our house when we’re gone. That does help! Plus my parents stop by as well.
We’re planning a vacation soon and these are great tips to keep our home safe while we’re away. Thanks for sharing!
Oh wow, what an important topic, we need to really equip our homes with a security system no only when we travel but all the time. Bad things can happen especially if we have pets in the house. That is my biggest worry. Thanks for sharing about this equipment.
Thanks for the valuable tips. These are the some great tips on who to secure our home while traveling. Thanks for sharing. I am sharing with my travel buddies.
This is a great list! I agree that it’s probably best to post on social media after your long trip. Another one you could add is to turn your water off (if gone longer than a week)…both my parents and I have had pipes burst before while we were out of town.
Great tips! and all of them are important to know. Thank you!
Super valuable advice and great tips on keeping your home safe while travelling. Thank you.
We have security cameras (inside and outside) that we can remotely access so we check our place all the time when we’re not here. In the US we can do a mail hold, so no mail gets delivered. Quick and easy too as you can do it online.
This is such an informative article! I will be sharing this with my family and friends for sure!
These lists are really helpful. We travel a lot and leave our home alone. Security camera is a plus, we are planning to install some this week.
These are very helpful tips. I did not know about the sliding door hack, thanks for sharing.
I cant think of anything unmentioned here any more. Everything that i could think of,to be secure when leaving my house is mentioned here.Maybe i could that if you were about to leave even just for hours, you could turn a loud music on, making intruders believe that somebody might be in the house.?
Loads of great tips here, it is so important to secure your home before going off on holiday. We always have people come to stay as we live in such an amazing place, everyone wants a free hioliday. Michx
Loving all the great tips. We don’t go away often but I am planning on getting hubby to install an alarm for me asap.
These are precious tips. I usually talk to one or two of my neighbors to help keep an eye out. It’s also nice to have a timer for your lights, one you can easily control by phone, that way you can turn on and off as you’d typically do. Also, ask your neighbor to put your trash out on trash day!
I am quite lucky that I can rely on my teens to look after the house when we are away. We do have a security system though
All of that is extremely good advice and should be adhered to by everyone! It is so easy for your home to be broken into–but also many ways to prevent it!
These are all great tips. We do most of these when we go away, though we don’t have an alarm so that’s maybe something to look in to.
When we’re in a house we’ll definitely have really good alarm systems and house security. But I do think speaking neighbours and friends to pop in and out of the property is always a good idea x
I didn’t realize that your insurance might not cover a robbery if I posted on social media.Good to know.
These are some great ideas I’ll be using as I travel this holiday season. I always talk to my neighbors and let them know, they are so nice.
These are some important tips to keep home safe when we go out. We are planning for a trip. This will help us a lot. Thanks for sharing.
These are so good! I live in an island in the south pacific, where there a LOT of volunteers at a near by school my friend’s kids go. The volunteers are always sooooooooooooo happy to house sit and are trustworthy! Definitely good advice here!
Excellent ideas. I write a checklist of what I should do before I leave!
I travel often so your advise is very valuable for me. I always ask our friends to have a sleep in our house once a week. We had dogs and they either travel with us or stay with at our friend’s family but it is always lack of dogs which is very hard to cover.
Such a worry these days. However these are fab tips. Something as simple as not closing the curtains is a good one xx
Excellent tips, and I like that so many of them don’t cost anything to implement. Leaving town is expensive enough, ya know??
These are excellent tips. I love the idea of having cameras outside the house. You can’t be too careful, especially these days!
The one about talking to your neighbours is so important! That’s the one thing my parents told me the one time we went on a family holiday xd
I agree with all of this. It is so important to try and protect your home when you are gone because it opens the place up to potential robbers. I have a security system and def inform my neighbors when we are going to be away for a long period of time.
Theae are really great tips not only to all travelers who live their house for a months but also to everyone who are always living the house for their everyday’s work.
You provided many useful tips here that I really appreciate! All aspects covered. Great read! Thank you so much for sharing.
These are wonderful tips. We all must be more diligent in this day and age. It’s so much easier to find out someone’s travel plans and take advantage, souring an otherwise wonderful trip.
Keeping your home secure this holiday is really important, we should do that and have to be careful.
I never knew sliding doors were easy to open! Thankfully my new house doesn’t have them. I will probably get friends to house sit when I go away x
These are seriously all such great tips! I would have never thought to leave my blinds open but this makes total sense 🙂
I never considered any of these but I do admit, the idea of travelling and leaving a home empty has put me off the idea of owning my own place. Also, I couldn’t resist social media updates so I would make it so obvious that my flat would be empty! x
This is a great list covers the little things we tend to forget..! I can’t agree more on the privacy settings.
Some of these tips I would’ve not thought about! I normally have a house sitter since I have pets! But good to know for the future in case I have none.
I find it helpful to have someone stop by from time to time to check on the place and keep it from being unattended the entire time. Social media does make it harder when we all want to be excited and share that we are away from home.
I totally agree, first things first is deaf talk to your neighbours, they will be able to keep an extra security eye out.
A professional home security kit looks like such a good idea. I feel my building is pretty secure but can always add an extra layer of security!!
Great tips. The tip on not posting on social media is so true. It’s super tempting but for safety reasons people don’t need to know exactly what you are doing.
The safety of our home is what really important when we are in travel. Thank you for sharing this. This can be very helpful.
Some brilliant tips. I am always worrying when we travel about our house so always take precautions to ensure people don’t realise we are away. Neighbours are great to ask to keep an eye.
Really great tips. We always let a few key people know when we are leaving, to keep an eye on things. Cameras have given us a lot of peace of mind too.
Leaving your home without no one leaves also an anxiety in our mind, so I”m thankful that you have shared great tips. Thanks for sharing ! 🙂