Dangers of Leaving Your Home Unsupervised While Traveling

Once we book a vacation or decide to travel somewhere unexpectedly, we can’t wait to get out of our front door. In all that excitement and hurry, more often than not we forget that we leave our home at the mercy of the world while we’re away. Leaving your home completely unsupervised can easily result in coming into a completely empty house and that alone is enough to ruin your will for vacationing forever.

That is why taking precautions is a must in this situation and when you give it some thought, it’s actually not that difficult to save yourself from any and every problem that might arise while you’re somewhere across the world having the time of your life. So, what can you do? Well, here are some tricks and tips that helped me over the years to keep my apartment more secure.

Think About Housesitting

One of the many marvels of the twenty-first century is having everything you can imagine at your fingertips, including someone trustworthy who will live in your home while you’re not there do it yourself. Housesitting is a great way to know that someone’s keeping an eye on what’s going on and what’s more, you’ll make some globetrotters very happy by opening your home to them. If you’re worried that you can’t find reliable people online to keep your house in check, then think again because the system of checkups that potential house sitters have to pass is getting more rigorous every year. There are professional house sitters that you can hire too, but they can be quite pricey, though you can be sure that everything will be just as you left it. This is a great idea if you’ve got pets and you don’t want them to be alone a lot.

Go to a Friend

If you don’t feel like entrusting your house to a complete stranger, then asking a friend or neighbor to take care of your house is the next best thing. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to move out of their own house to take care of yours, but they will check up if everything’s alright every couple of days and they can even spend the night if you’re leaving for a longer period of time. Someone spending some time in your house at random times of the day will discourage criminals from taking advantage of the fact that the house is temporarily unsupervised. Your friends can tidy up a bit, take care of your packages, water your plants and in general take care of the place while you’re gone. Just don’t forget to take them out to a nice dinner after you come back or return the favor, they’ve certainly deserved it.

Take Care of Your Home Appliances

One of the things you should definitely take care of before you lock the doors and set off into another adventure is unplugging all the home appliances. Not only will you save money on electricity because some appliances still draw energy even when they’re not working, but you’ll also protect the things you have from power surges that can easily break them down. Another good option when it comes to protecting everything home-related is to have a home warranty. There are countless warranty options out there with any kind of coverage you can think of – from fixing your plumbing for an incredibly reasonable fee to getting your sprinkler system back on track. All you have to do is pick a company that seems most reliable to you, choose what in your home you want to protect and you’re good to go.

Careful with Your Facebook

Cyber criminals have become incredibly good at using any form of sharing important life events on social media to their advantage, which is why you need to be extremely careful. If you let all of your friends know that you’ll be out and about leaving your house unattended for weeks on end, it can happen that someone will take this as an opportunity to “relieve you of your possessions”. Be smart when it comes to announcing anything on social media, you never know who else might be watching and you really don’t want to find out by coming back into a burgled house. While sharing all those awesome vacation pictures with your friends is great, it should wait until you come back from your trip. Better to be safe than sorry.

Take Care of Your Mail and Put Away the Spare Key

Nothing says “no one’s home” like a mailbox chockfull of bills and mail. If you want to avoid this dead giveaway that you’re not there, then make sure to stop all your deliveries, including newspaper before you’re gone. This is quite easy to do, it won’t cost you a thing and knowing you won’t have a bunch of bills crammed into your mailbox when you come back will give you some peace of mind. Yet another useful tip is to hide away your spare key or give it to the person that will be in charge of your home until you come back. You really don’t want to give thieves the key to your place, I mean, that’s just calling for trouble.

As you can see, you don’t have to put too much effort into keeping your home safe while you’re traveling, just thinking ahead will do perfectly. You want to have all covered before you head out, you’ll be much more content, not to mention peaceful. – Howard Scalia

Also Read:

• Tips for Traveling Solo Internationally
• Backpacking 101 : Why Traveling Light is Right?
• Top 5 Travel Apps to Improve Your Traveling Experience