5 tips to make your home safer
Our homes are much more than just a roof for shelter: for all the time we live in them, they should be a place of rest and recharge - a refuge from everyday life. For this to be possible, it is necessary that we feel safe in our homes.
It is not always possible to invest large sums of money to upgrade our security systems to get the newest solutions, and this is especially true for renters. However, it is possible to take some precautions or measures to help us feel a little safer, such as the ones we describe below.
Changing the house keys: if we own the house, perhaps this is not so necessary, but it certainly does not hurt to update and upgrade the entrance locks every few years. And it certainly becomes important when we happen to lose our keys somewhere.
As for those rent, however, as soon as the rental period begins it is wise to check with the owner that the locks are new: after all, it is possible that the previous tenants, or even their close acquaintances, still have copies of the keys.
Add a second security lock to the entrance doors.
If the door is not armored, it is a good idea to at least add a second lock in addition to the one usually found near the handle. Renters need to ask for permission from the owners, but this is a fairly simple installation and offers a good measure of extra security for a small price. It is always preferable to choose non-spring locks, i.e. those with a European cylinder, and which are made of all-steel parts.
Especially if you live on the ground or first floor of a building, it is easy to see the interior of your house through a window. Use curtains other devices that screen the glass and creates privacy. They can be panels made by hand, to be placed on the window, or even films which can be stuck directly to the glass.
In this way, no one will be able to easily check if you are at home or not. Neither will your desirable valuables (like TVs, computers and similar) be visible to potential thieves.
An additional protection for the doors are devices that lock the door from the inside, preventing it from being opened by force from the outside. They can even be portable (one of the names by which to find them is "door jammer"), and then there are those that can be installed permanently. These are permanently installed using a hole in the floor to situate them - as is done with reinforcement bars of certain armored doors.
Obviously, free-standing cameras can also be useful - easily controlled remotely with simple apps on smartphones, and are also removable, so even those who rent can take them away with them if they change home.
These are all small measures, but they can go a long way in making your home safer.
