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Before you head off on your vacations, you want to make sure your house is safe and secure. With these five house checks to make before you go on vacation, you can do just that.
Heating Turned Off
There’s no point heating an empty house, so double check you’ve got everything turned off before you leave. If you are away for a couple of weeks, this can really add to your bills and be very inefficient.
It is not just your energy that can add to your bills either, so try to make sure you’re not going to leave anything on that’s going to consume energy.
Secure Your Car
Your next most valuable possession after your house is your car, so make sure it’s well secured. If you’ve got a garage, then this is the ideal place to keep it, but if not, there are other alternatives.
Portable garages allow you to get your car off the street and just give it a little extra protection. Once you’ve got it in a nice safe place, then make sure it’s all locked up, and there are no valuables left on display.
Extra Security Measures
Ideally, you don’t want to be advertising the fact that nobody is in your house. Packages that get left at your door for a few days or the fact that no lights are being turned on can draw the attention of thieves, so take some extra security steps.
Set some lights on a timer so they turn on when the light fades and go off when you would normally go to bed, and make sure you’ve canceled any packages. This helps to stop your house from standing out as being empty.
Clean Out Things That Will Leave a Bad Smell
You don’t want to come back to a horrible smell, so try to clean out anything that might go off.
The most obvious ones are the bins and fridge. If you forget these, then the food will go off and leave your home smelling less than ideal, so it’s well worth the effort. The cleaner you can leave your house, the nicer it will be to come back to after your vacation, but the smelly parts are the most important.
Lock Up
Go around and make sure everything that needs to be locked is locked.
Many people have that problem where they know deep down, they’ve locked the door, but when they’re sitting on a plane, they suddenly think, “did I?” If you’re someone who has this problem, then try doing something unusual or memorable when you lock the door. Think of a word you never use, sing a song you haven’t heard in a long time, scratch your head while you rub your tummy – just something that’s going to make it a memorable event.
Once you have taken care of all the steps and locked the door, then you’re free to head off on your vacations.
