Make your Home a ‘NOT-SPOT’ for Potential Burglars
Forget booby-traps and ‘Home Alone’ style, burglary defences; here is a comprehensive, concise list of tips to make sure you house looks more like a hindrance than a haven to any hiding hooligans.
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Below are some excellent, common-sense life hacks on home security.
If you didn’t think of them before, get on with fool-proofing your home and preventing all your hard earned personal stuff traumatically disappearing…
1. CASH PRIZES
No – not for you – try to refrain from displaying all of your worldly goods, antiques, cash, sports-car(s) and jewellery anywhere visible – well away from windows and locked up safely. As much as keeping up with the Jones’ is frequently a suburban theme, the less showy and more modestly you can present your home will point potential thieves to the ‘show offs’ down at number 32, stopping the loss of potentially priceless, personal, nostalgic items that to the opportunist burglar will mean nothing more than a quick steal.
In other words, don’t display a burglar’s Jackpot!
2. GET A DOG
Remember, a Dog isn’t just for Christmas – we know this – but the added bonus of a canine family representative to deter any intruder is worth a thought in terms of extra ability to secure and alert your family to any unwelcome intruders. A smaller dog may even make more noise than a larger, more traditional guard dog, so the comfort and protection of a constantly alert dog could be extremely helpful.
3. Make Sure it Seems like Someone is ‘IN’ as Much as Possible
Now, the use of motion sensor lighting and indoor timers on lamps are a great way to put off unsure amateur thieves. Along with your new guard dog, there are considerably good back and front door lighting products with timers that turn on at dusk to create a homely lived in porch/front entrance.
In the eyes of a thief – your place will be broken in to only when they have tried to work out your daily schedule. As sinister as that sounds, most petty thieves do this to avoid any sort of confrontation with the owner or resident of the property.
3.1 Neighbourhood Watch
Look out for each other. In cities it has become too much the norm that neighbours pass each other with barely a mumble of acknowledgment. Like ships passing in the night, it is understandable that with chaotic schedules, sometimes a community feel is at risk of being lost in inner cities. It correlates that petty burglary crime happens in such areas much more frequently.
If you really can’t be doing with a group meeting each month to stay in reasonable contact with your nearest neighbours – this will involve socialising – perhaps send a small card or three around your nearest neighbours to say you will keep an eye out for intruders and unrecognisable folk in the hope that they might do the same for you.
Those who work from home, be vigilant, keep track of different vehicles – particularly vans – and take effort and pride in trying to create the type of community we all ideally strive to live in.
4. Try to Keep the Surrounding Outside Area ‘Open’
A pretty cost-effective, non-technological way to deter potential intruders is to avoid the temptation to make your outside space entirely private and closed off. Tall, dark, thick-trunked trees and shrubs make it much easier for a potential thief to sneak around. Taller, more mature shrubs can also act as a good climbing material, so make sure you keep these trimmed and locks fitted on upstairs windows.
These tips are based less on locksmith technology, and more about common sense, and more immediate, practical general things you can do before meeting with our expert master locksmiths to customise and plan a security system suitable for your home.
Our range of products will be looked in depth in our next blog posts. Often seemingly very small, inexpensive measures like fitting your windows with locks and a few timer lights will scare most, would-be intruders off, and certainly make the hardiest burglar think twice.