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Burglar via FlickrEveryone wants to fix up their home to make it as comfortable, appealing and as valuable as possible. After spending numerous hours and your hard-earned money on home improvement, of course you will want to protect your investment.

Try the following tips to help secure your home and protect your family.

  • Stay on the lookout for unusual activity in your neighborhood. Remember: it is always better to be safe than sorry, so report anything that seems suspicious.
  • Be sure that all of the windows and doors in your home are properly secured.
  • Install peepholes in the doors so you can screen visitors without having to open your door. You may also want to invest in an intercom system.
  • Always ask for identification from service and delivery people before letting them into your home.
  • Install deadbolt locks on all doors that lead to the outdoors.
  • Make sure smoke detectors are working and up to code. Test monitors monthly.
  • Keep your yard clean and hedges trimmed.
  • Keep emergency phone numbers by the telephone at all times. Be sure that any visitors know where these numbers are in case of emergency.
  • Never leave extra keys outside of your home.
  • Keep the outside of your home well lit.
  • Keep all exits in your home clear of all forms of clutter.

Consider taking these following special precautions if you are going on vacation or out of town:

  • Have someone you trust pick up your mail and newspapers daily. Also see if they can check on your home by walking around the perimeter and checking for anything out of the ordinary such as opened windows.
  • Turn down or off the ringers on all of your landline phones while you are away. A loud, unanswered phone is an easy indication that there is no one home.
  • Remove anything outside of your home that could be used to get inside your home such as ladders or trashcans that could be used to enter a window or climb over a wall or fence.
  • Use automatic timers to operate the lights.

Lastly, invest in a quality home security system that you can trust. A great alarm system is one of the best defenses against break-ins.

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Editor’s Note: Protection 1® is one of the largest and most respected alarm monitoring companies in the U.S. Visit Protection 1 today for installation, maintenance, and monitoring of single-family home security systems, business security systems and multi-family security systems. ~jb

Images via Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stefz/485489764/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kylemacdonald/66009648/