Your Residential Seattle Locksmith Helps to Avoid Break-Ins

medium_3656928090We all want our family, friends, and guests to feel welcome anytime they enter our home. However, many of us are unknowingly rolling out the welcome mat to burglars as well. Here are some tips from your residential Seattle Locksmith on how to keep your home safe, and unappealing to intruders.

Don’t Leave Spare Keys. It may seem like a great idea to leave a spare key under the mat, but it’s a well-known hiding spot, and may as well be a personal invitation for a burglar to enter your home. Even if you’ve found a clever way to hide a spare key, there is still a chance that someone could see where you put it and a break in could occur.

Beware of Curb Appeal. We aren’t talking about the landscape of your yard, it’s what you leave in it that’s concerning. It’s pretty common to place a box from a tv, or gaming console outside by the garbage cans, or leave items like boats in plain site. However, they alert potential intruders that you can afford things worth stealing and that attracts them into your home.

Know Who You’re Letting In. Repairmen, gardeners, and door-to-door salesmen are perfect examples of strangers that we often let into our homes. To keep your home and family safe, thoroughly check out the companies you hire your workers from, and avoid letting anyone else you do not know into your home. Many burglaries have resulted from a robber taking inventory of a home under one of these disguises and then returning to break in at a later time.

Eliminate an Escape Route. Cleaner yards with trimmed bushes and trees are unappealing to burglars because it does not leave them anywhere to hide. Their break-in and escape are both left out in the open, making it easy for others to see and identify the intruder.

Someone Is Always Home. Or at least that’s what you want them to think! Break-ins are far more likely to happen when no one is home. Leaving lights, tvs, radios, and other devices on while you are away will make it appear like someone is home. It has been said that this trick scares intruders away more than alarms do because they are more visible from the outside.

Stay On Top of Things. An overstuffed mailbox and a pile of newspapers on the porch are two of the biggest signals that no one is home. Make a point of picking these things up daily to make it known that someone is there. If you are going out of town, have your mail held at the post office until you return and have a friend or neighbor you can trust collect the newspapers from your yard.

Lock It Down. Windows, doors, the garage; any entrance into your home should be locked and secured when you are not there. For sliding doors and windows, consider securing them with rods or dowels so that they cannot be lifted off of their tracks. Make sure that garage doors are not left open, and if they can be opened manually, make sure that they are locked. Finally, make sure to have locks from a residential Seattle locksmith on all doors and windows.

Locking everything up is the best way to ensure that your home and family are safe. If you need help with the lock security in your home, call our residential Seattle locksmith at (206) 284-0151. We would love to help you keep your home safe!

Sources:
Conger, Cristen. “Top 10 Simple Ways to Discourage Break-Ins.” How Stuff Works. (2014).
Crouch, Michelle. “13+ Things a Burglar Won’t Tell You.” Reader’s Digest. (2009).
photo credit: Heather Elias via photopin cc