Protecting your home whilst at WDW

[BigThunder]

Hi. this is a partly shameless plug of my free alexa skill which you might find useful to use whist away at WDW to protect your home. It's called Burglar Deterrent and can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B4XGP4M

But apart from this, what other unique ways do you use to protect your home or make it seem like someone is still there whilst you are on vacation?

 

[cedricandsophie]

We have an alarm system. And s friend drops by to put mail in house. And we stop paper delivery.

 

[Poohforyou]

We have a dog sitter who stays at our house plus an alarm system.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

Our son stays home more often than not.

If he goes with us, we have a house sitter.

We also have an alarm system.

 

[momto2girls]

We have an alarm system. We also have cameras all around our house and the Ring system on our doors.

We stop the mail when we are gone and put timers on some of our lights.

We tell our neighbors that we will be gone, so that they can keep an eye on the house.

 

[Darcy03231]

We have an alarm system with motion detectors that will alert us on our phones, as well as set off an ear-piercing shriek. PD is only about a mile away so they'll get there quickly.

We also leave a car in the driveway, have lights on timers and one of our neighbors picks up our mail. We alert our neighbors and they'll keep an eye on the house.

 

[gillep]

We have a dog sitter that comes during the day and stays overnight, they also take care of putting the garbage and recycling bins out and bringing them back in.
Our lights are automatic dusk to dawn and our plants are on a watering system.
We have safety bars in the tracks of all of our windows and doors.
My car stays in its usual spot in the driveway.
I stop the mail and all deliveries.
Pool and lawn people still come on schedule.

ETA: We don't post online at all that we are on or going on vacation, nor do we post photos or anything from vacation.

 

[dyna]

DH an I left the older DD's at home usually took the younger 1. Sometimes we left all of them at home went by ourselves. This was before the days of alarm systems an cameras when the whole family went we locked up hoped for the best, usually stopped the mail an paper never was there a problem.

 

[BrianL]

I usually like to have someone stay at my house, but that's not always possible. In addition I have an alarm system and a Foscam camera that I can check with my phone from anywhere which gives me peace of mind.

 

[neverlandsky]

We have our living room light on a timer daily from 5pm to 10:30 pm. So when we aren’t home, it continues on.

 

[marlynnp]

yeah, I'll take a pass on the hackable app that let's people know I'm out of town

 

[Hikergirl]

We have a few lights on timers, there are always cars in the driveway and we ask our neighbors to keep an eye on things.

 

[ronandannette]

No alarms, no cameras, quite often we don't even lock the doors as we normally come and go. When we go away (which, like @gillep we never publicize) DS usually stays home. When he doesn't we lock the doors. We've lived in various neighbourhoods in the same city for 30 years and have never changed this routine. In our present location (a condo complex) according to the newsletter, there hasn't been a theft or break-in reported during the 3 years we've lived here.

 

[DVC-Don]

We have a monitored alarm system, forward the mail and use timers on some lamps. That, plus our son stops by to check and clear the driveway when we are in Florida, which is most of the winter.

 

[anniemae]

We have an alarm system. We also have a family friend check the house daily, she lives in the neighborhood. She takes in the mail, waters the plants and feeds the fish. Our town also has a police program where you let the police know when you are away and they will drive by the house daily to check up on things.

 

[Marchand63]

Whilst we are on vacation we have the have the Old Baird watch our house.

 

[superme80]

We have a dog sitter who stays overnight. We also don't really have anything of value. The only thing that "might" be worth stealing is the tv. And I guess my dog, but it that is low.

 

[DisneyHardin]

We have an alarm. I also always stop the mail and paper. When we go on long trips, I let our neighbor know we will be gone. My DH is a police officer, so when we travel, his police car is sitting in the driveway.

 

[3Gsandme]

We have an alarm system and someone stop by to take care of the cats.

 

[smiths02]

Most of the time, we have had a family member staying at the house at least part of the time. I'm not sure if someone will be staying at our house this time around, so we might alert our neighbors. Our local police department also has a house watch request. "Going out of town? The police department offers a vacation house watch service. Our officers will check your residence once per shift while you're away and let you and/or your contact person know if something is wrong."

The most common way to break into a house is kicking down doors. We have Nightlock and StrikeMaster on all of our doors as well as good double sided deadbolts on the doors with glass panels (so someone can't just break the glass and turn the lock).

We have the Ring camera system.

We also have a large safe where most of our valuables are kept.

We also stop the mail.

We also moved to our neighborhood about 6 1/2 years ago from our previous neighborhood. We choose a place with low crime and as pesky as our HOA is, people are nosy and will call police (and police will respond in a very timely manner vs the 45 minutes it took for a response when we were burglarized in our previous neighborhood). I know that does not mean nothing bad can happen, but it has reduced our chances.