Keeping Your Home Safe When You Travel

[The Traveling Eye]

I travel a lot which means I'm away from home and it also means that I think about home safety and security.  I have a few things that I do but I'm always on the prowl for tips and useful information on keeping my home safe.  I live in a condominium and recently received a notice under my door that our building had two break ins.  Both break-ins occurred when the home owners were out of town.  This means that someone must have known they weren't home.  You couldn't get any closer to home than this so I decided to do "Ja'Vonne's Travel Minute", a weekly travel vignette that I do on our show The Traveling Eye on keeping your safe when you travel.  Doing my research I came across an article in Readers Digest titled "13 Things You Never Knew About Home Safety". While not all of these tips are for when you're away, a lot of them were.

1. Sock away your valuables in your children's rooms because most burglars don't go in there.
2. Plant thorny bushes under a low window.  It's decorative and a deterrent
3. Ask a neighbor to be on the look out for fliers in your door and collect them if they're there.  This is a trick burglars use.  They leave a flier and then come back later to see if it's still there.
4. Turn your phone ringer on low or off
5. If you don't have a security system get a decal for display
6. Join a neighborhood watch
7. Don't load up the car until the morning you're leaving
8. if you have a security key pad make sure the display it is not visible.
9. Take care of mail slots that are in doors.  There's a more strategic place for it.
10. Keep your car keys next to your bed on your night stand
11. Store wood away from windows or any home entry point
12. When you have workers in your home do a security sweep of your home when they leave.
13. choose your locksmith wisely.

Prepare and be prepared and have a wonderful trip.