Preparing for an Extended Absence: Home Security Tips

Are you planning on leaving your house for an extended absence? Winter weather is settling in across much of the United States, so many of us are dreaming of warmer climates. Some people are lucky enough to be retired or have remote jobs that allow them to take extended RV trips.

When we leave, people stay in our house. But if you’re leaving your house empty, here are some tips for handling everything before you hit the road.

In addition to these tips, tell your neighbors you’re leaving and how to reach you in an emergency. It will be comforting to know they are monitoring your property and will alert you if anything happens.

Inside your home

• Clean everything — you don’t want to come home to a mess, or worse, a stinky mess!
  • This especially includes anything that might become a space for things to grow, including refrigerators, showers, sinks and toilets.
  • Clean out any fresh food that would spoil.
  • Depending on how long you’ll be gone, consider emptying the refrigerator and freezer. Then, you can shut the whole unit down to save on electric costs.
  • When everything is clean, sweep through the house to empty all the trash cans.
• Unplug electronics if you can. Many modern devices use electricity even when turned off, so unplugging them eliminates wasteful spending.
  • This has the added benefit of protecting them from any power surges due to power outages or storms.
• Turn off your water supply.
  • Leaks can happen at any time. Don’t risk a costly flood by having a pipe break when no one is around.
• Turn off your water heater.
  • Shut off any gas or electric power to your water heater so it doesn’t spend a lot of energy keeping water warm for nobody.
  • Depending on how long you’ll be gone, consider draining the heater to prevent the water inside from stagnating.
• Adjust your thermostat to keep things comfortable.
  • What’s comfortable for an empty house is colder or warmer than what’s comfortable for you when you’re living in it. Get a programmable thermostat that you can set and forget. It will maintain the heat or air conditioning at a reasonable temperature to ensure extremely high or low temperatures don’t impact the contents of your home.
• Double-check the locks on all doors and windows, and consider installing security bars on sliding glass doors.
• Set up a timer for interior lighting.
  • Having lights come on and off throughout the evening simulates someone being home. That helps deter burglars.
    • Many newer timers can randomly set the time of night when the lights come on and off. That way, burglars can’t quickly figure out a pattern and realize it’s all a ruse.
    • Also, consider a TV simulator. They flash light patterns on a wall to make it appear that someone is watching television at night.
• Set up security cameras.
  • We have had good luck with the Amazon Blink system, which we use when we’re home or away to keep tabs on things.
    • The system has indoor and outdoor cameras you can mount in various ways and with different power sources.
• Hopefully, we don’t have to remind you about your pets, but what about your plants? Can someone come over and water them periodically? Or could the plants live with someone else when you leave?

Outside your home

• Provide someone with access, such as a family member or friend. Ideally, more than one person should have a key for emergencies and be nearby. Consider leaving at least one of those keys with a neighbor.
• Take care of your mail.
  • You can suspend your mail and have the post office hold onto it until you return or schedule delivery for a scheduled date.
  • You could also arrange for someone to pick up your mail for you. If you sign up for Informed Delivery at www.usps.com, you’ll receive a daily email with scans of mail you have coming in. That way, you can alert whoever is getting your mail if you have an urgent delivery that you need them to open.
• Suspend deliveries
  • What else comes to your house besides mail? Do you have newspapers delivered, or perhaps a Subscribe and Save order from Amazon? What about salt for a water softener? Are there prescriptions that arrive every few months? Think about what comes to your house regularly but not every day or week.
• Suspend garbage pickup
  • Contact your garbage company to see if they can suspend your account since you won’t be putting any trash out.
• Depending on the season and location, you may need to consider snow removal or lawn maintenance.
  • Do you have a neighbor who could shovel your driveway and sidewalk after a snowstorm so it doesn’t appear that no one is home?
  • How about a neighbor or family member who can mow your lawn?
  • Is there a professional landscaping service available to keep your grass mowed? They can sometimes also handle snow removal.
• Check your gutters
  • Make sure to clean leaves and other debris from your gutters. Usually, you can tell a gutter is clogged when you’re home, but when you’re not, it could cause trouble.
• Prepare your vehicles
  • Can they be put in a garage so no one sees them sitting and not being used, suggesting no one is home?
  • Consider disconnecting the battery to help preserve it.
  • See if someone can occasionally come by and take the vehicle out for a drive. Regular use is good for the battery, and it will also benefit the engine, the tires, and more.
• Are you the neighborhood wildlife feeder? If you regularly leave food out for stray cats or love watching the birds at your birdfeeders, who will take care of that while you’re gone?

We hope this list is helpful, but we know it isn’t all-inclusive because everyone leads different lives. However, it should help you start thinking about what to do when leaving your home for an extended absence.

What else do you do that we haven’t covered? We want to add it to this checklist.

We also created a handy checklist based on this blog post that you can download: