Easy Ways to Increase Safety at Your Family Home

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As crime increases in neighborhoods across the country, there's a growing interest in home security. While every homeowner should install a monitored security system, there are easier and cheaper things you can also do to protect your home. Here are a few effective ways you can protect your home without having to spend much money.

Keep Your Yard Safe

While adding a fence around your property will help you maintain privacy and security for your family, it will also help limit your liability. If your yard isn't protected by a fence or some other barrier, a trespasser who gets injured on your property may be able to seek damages from you. For the same reason, you should have a pool fence installed around your swimming pool or hot tub. This will keep neighborhood children from wandering into your pool and getting injured on your property.

Eliminate Shrubbery

If you have shrubs or large plants around the foundation of your home, consider transplanting them to other areas. Large shrubs, trees, and plants provide ideal concealment for home invaders who may be looking for an easy way into your home. They can hide behind bushes and wait for your family to leave. Once they feel safe to proceed, they can use the shrubbery to conceal them as they force a window open. Even your closest neighbors may not see anything wrong. For the same reason, you should remove trellises and other exterior features that will allow invaders to gain access to an upstairs window or duct.

Reduce Evening Exposure

When the sun starts to set, you should make it a common practice to close the blinds and curtains over your home's windows. As it gets darker outside, it will become easier for people to see inside your home without you seeing them in turn. Potential criminals can use this opportunity to see if you have anything worth stealing inside your home. However, if you always cover your windows at dusk, you'll make it much more difficult for burglars to see into your home.

Secure Sliding Doors

Sliding glass doors, such as those that open up onto a patio, are easily forced open by an industrious home intruder. You make this much more difficult by placing a wooden dowel or metal rod in the track after the door has been locked shut. Even if someone is able to force the lock, they will find it nearly impossible to force the door open. They will probably have to break the glass just to get into the home through this access point, and that would draw too much attention.

Post Warning Signs

Even if you don't have a dog, post warning signs that caution intruders of the presence of a dog. For added effect, leave a large, semi-eaten rawhide bone on your porch or in your yard. Home invaders are less likely to break into a home if they think they're going to have to contend with a large dog. If you do have a dog, leave the curtains and blinds open just a bit to allow your dog to peek outside. Even the friendliest dog in the world is going to seem vicious to a stranger who has already seen the "beware of dog" signs in your front yard.

Install Smart Lighting

While smart lighting may sound expensive, it's actually an inexpensive way to reduce the threats of a home invasion or burglary. It involves connecting your home's exterior lights to a series of motion sensors that will control the lights. The sensitivity of the sensors can be adjusted to ensure the lights won't come on every time a rodent scurries across your yard, but the lights will come on when a larger shape comes close to your home. Since burglars and other criminals prefer to work undetected, the sudden light will usually chase them away.

Conclusion

In addition to using the tips suggested here, you can continue to look for practices and devices that will help you make your home a less tempting target. Home invasions are more likely to occur where a residence looks unprotected, so simply making it apparent that you use home security equipment may be enough to deter the majority of criminals.