1. Don’t leave your garage door opener in the car – it’s like handing the keys to your house to anyone that breaks into your car. Get a keychain version instead so it goes where you go.
2. Get a small safe for your most valuable treasures.
3. Reinforce your door jam – if you installed your door in the last 10 years then you really don’t have anything to worry about although you could still check by removing the hardware to see if the screws are at least three inches long.
The Family Handyman
4. Always know who’s at your door by installing a peep hole – drill through both sides of the door and screw the peephole in. A wide angle peep hole is better!
5. If you would like to know what happens at your house – when you’re not around then install some security cameras. This can scare off some thieves.
6. Reinforce that insubstantial garage door – use some two by fours, plywood and brackets. Screw the plywood into the door with dry screws and test out the two by fours to see how thick you’ll need your filler strips to be.
The Family Handyman
7. Your patio doors are also a weak point. You could install The Door Guardian, which is easy to disengage whenever you like.
8. Find a better place to keep your spare keys… for example you could keep them in a lock box!
9. Since most burglars use force to break into your home – you could beef up your door with even more reinforcement. It takes some time but it’s time well spent when it could save you a ton of money from property loss.
10. Or you could always save all the trouble and just wire up your whole house with a security system.
11. To prevent your deadbolts on locks from getting picked, you can use this SimLOCK.
12. A door stop that sounds an alarm when someone enters your house and tries to walk around.
13. You can physically lock you garage door opener when you leave for vacation so that if someone manages to get into your house via another entrance they won’t be able to open the garage door from the inside and make off with the car.
14. Your mailbox carries a lot of important information, make sure no one can get to it with a secure mailbox!
15. To deter thieves from even getting close to your house…install motion detector lights this usually sends them running off!
Via-The Family Handyman
I kind of feel like a security expert now, you could do most of these installations in one day and they only require a small investment that could go a long way towards protecting your home!
