Looking for ways to make your home safer for you and your family? Here are 20 tips for you to prevent burglary. Some may be easily adopted on a daily basis, others will be especially useful in a crisis situation.

For your home, it is essential to ensure the maintenance of comfort, control of the situation and your ability to protect yourself in the event of a crisis. Whatever the origin of the crisis, your main goal should be to protect your loved ones at any cost.

Even out of a crisis, it is important to prevent burglary by adopting simple, so simple habits that they are sometimes forgotten. There are many ways to make it clear to criminals that they are not welcome

1. Secure your gateway with several locks. Yes, it’s a bit boring to have to walk around with more than one key, but why make it easier for criminals? Two locks per door are not excessive.

2. Reinforce your door and your door frame. It doesn’t help to put three solid locks on a weak door that won’t hold a shoulder kick. Be sure to invest in a steel door frame, which will be much more difficult to break.

3. Never leave your key under a flower pot, a doormat or anywhere. Everyone knows these techniques and will start by looking there. If you really want to have a safe key outside your home, place it in a safe deposit box with solid code.

4. Never put your address on your keys (well, yes, some still do that…). Might as well put a sign outside your home marked “enter and serve yourself”.

5. Light properly around your house, it’s not that expensive. For the less important areas, you can use sunlight lamps. On the other hand, use real lamps for your entry doors and your garage. Motion detection lamps are interesting because they allow to not waste electricity overnight and will be able to surprise and detect potential burglars.

6. Consider investing in an alarm system to prevent burglary. Not necessarily a very expensive system linked to a response team. A simple alarm sound can do the trick. And keep a low profile: a visible alarm system will show your potential burglars that you have a lot of interesting things to protect.

7. Lock to the place where you store your emergency reserves: food reserves, freezer etc. Many people keep their freezers in their garage that is often isolated from the house, unprotected and poorly lit. It’s a bad idea.

8. Secure your mailbox. Mailboxes are an excellent indicator for burglars: By checking the date of the last posted letters, they can know if you’re away from home and for how long.

9. Take care of your House properly. Prune your shrubs and your bushes so they can’t be used as a hiding place. Make sure your House close surroundings do not allow someone to hide until you are gone. Open terrain will more easily allow your neighbors to see if someone breaks into your home.

10. If you are close to your neighbors, feel free to let them know when you leave for a long time to make them a little more attention to your home so they can warn you if something is wrong. Do it only if your neighbors can be trusted.

11. Beware of people who come knocking at your door without warning you of their visit beforehand. Whether it’s delivery people, foreigners or police officers, be wary. A lot of burglars do not hesitate to pass for someone to enter your home. If in doubt, ask to see an ID card and take possibly a tear spray in danger. If in doubt, do not open the door. Do not forget that today any uniform can be ordered online.

12. If you have a portal outside your home, keep it locked. This will prevent strangers from knocking at your door. And if someone knocks on your door while your gate is closed, you’ll know you have a problem…

13. Get to know your neighbors, it’s essential as they will be your allies and your eyes in a crisis. No need to become their best friends, but be always cordial to them and do not hesitate to engage in a community of ‘vigilant neighbors’ if it exists in your neighborhood.

14. A dog is an excellent friend, a friend that is very effective to protect you. No need to have a monster, a small dog barking can be enough to deter a criminal to enter your home. A dog will tell you quickly that a stranger is near your house, or already inside.

15. Feel free to plant ‘inhospitable’ plants on your property. Inhospitable does not mean ugly. There are many very beautiful thorny plants, such as roses or bougainvillea. It’s interesting to plant this kind of vegetation under your windows for example.

16. Hide the signs of your absence if you are absent for a long time. If possible, ask someone to mow your lawn, picking up mail or pubs piling up in your mailbox from time to time. You can also leave a light or program your TV to turn on automatically at certain times of the day with the help of a timer. In short, make sure your home always looks busy in order to prevent burglary.

17. Secure your sliding doors because they are very easy to break. To block them simply put a bar of wood or metal to the right length in the slide.

18. Avoid having windows on or around your door. It’s very easy in this case for someone to break the window and open the lock from the inside. If you already have your door close to windows, add decorative grids.

19. Create a security zone in your house where you could hide if someone aggressive breaks into your home, waiting for help. Put a very strong door (or even a front door) to make this room impenetrable once locked from the inside. Be sure to have a cell phone for communication inside the room and possibly a gun for your defense.

20. Stop talking about your preparation to everyone. It doesn’t help to make so much effort to prepare your home and your family if everyone is aware of your plans! In a crisis, the less prepared will likely come to your home knowing that you have a lot of reserves and cause you problems by attracting attention to yourself.

Think like a burglar if you want to prevent burglary

This is the best advice you can receive to prevent burglary! Once you have implemented the previous tips, walk around your property, putting yourself in the place of a burglar seeking to penetrate your home. Look for flaws, entry points. Look at your House from the street. Did you see objects of value from the windows that looked attainable? Or is that your house looks modest, well maintained and well lit? If you were a burglar, whose house on your street would you go for first?

Last word

As you know, a crisis can have all sorts of origins: natural disaster, epidemic, economic collapse, civil war, large-scale terrorist attack… Whatever the origin of the crisis, you gain a lot to be used to secure your home every day. And of course, do this with pleasure, do this with your family.

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