The Great Hunt: How do you make your house look occupied while on holiday?

pippinpuss

My hall light is on a timer plus my cats need feeding twice a day so my parents car comes & goes at different times.

I also do this when they are away for their cat & water their garden.

mothernerd

I rarely go away but I leave the downstairs curtains open (direct onto the street so had to have nets, well plain voile) and the bedroom curtains closed. In summer I probably wouldn't draw the curtains downstairs/ would open them again before bedtime and frequently leave the bedroom curtains closed - normal for shift workers or those with teenagers at the 'vampire' stage (wear black stay in bed all day and go out at night).

I also used to leave the washed up pots on the draining board - we were overlooked by a car park at the back and generally don't leave the house too tidy. Half read book on the arm chair, few clothes ready to be put away, toys out on the floor (like the old towels on the washing line)- all say that if you can't see the householder at the moment they have only left the room for a moment and will be back to resume their activity.

If you don't attain show house standards normally (at least not unless all children and some adults are in bed) - it screams 'on holiday'. Okay you are not coming home to the mess, but the first thing you are going to do when you get back is empty the entire contents of your and your family's wardrobe out of the suitcase and turn the whole house into a laundry for three days (unless you leave the suitcases in the boot until you can cope with them - I never had many clothes).

I also took the precaution (not just for holidays) of always having a proper solid wooden door installed front and back - too many people have a solid door and locks at the front and something flimsy and half clear glass (sometimes helpfully showing that they have left the key in the lock) at the back.

I did have a friend who would drive around a car park until he found a car the same as his but in better condition to park next to. His reasoning being a thief would have to expend the same amount of energy to steal either car, so would pick the better one. Off topic sorry.

Three-tigers

Many houses here have window shutters, those which don't or leave them open, are the houses which tend to get burgled! Burglars like the easy and not-noisy option too. Which house would you chose?

Ours are down at night and all the time when we are away on holiday + light timers too.

Keepgoing_2

One of the best ways is to be a lazy bum all the time - my curtains often aren't opened during the day anyway, and I'm often up with the lights on in the middle of the night - a burglar would have trouble! :rotfl:

Doc_N

We have a very simple solution.

The whole house is in such a general state of disarray (nobody ever died with the final words 'I wish I'd done more housework'!) that any potential burglar would take one look through the window and rapidly reach the conclusion that one of his mates had got there first.

So he'd just move on to the next house.

Sophie...

Mr_Wang wrote: »

You're one of those aren't you.

I was at my GF mothers house at Christmas and at midnight we all headed for bed. She spouted up "Oh, we can't go to bed yet, the cat isn't ready to come in"

I mean seriously - !!!!!! :cool:

Ha ha, we've got a rabbit like that who rules the roost! He has to be bribed in at night!!!

trailingspouse

The only time I was burgled, the neighbour's lad that I paid to open/close curtains was unable to do it, and the bulb of the light that we left on a timer blew.

Biggles

Devonian_Rodders wrote: »

Noted many contributors use timers in order to give impression home is "Lived In" when you are away.
I tried this many years ago with success BUT.......a neighbout opposite once told me "I always know when you are away because your lights go on and of at this time and that time". So I invested in timers which operated randomly.

That's the reason I allow my main lights to be controlled by timers at all times - even when I'm at home. This way, there's no obvious difference when I'm away. Because of this, a neighbour commented recently that they never knew when I was away!

[Deleted User]

Invest in some dummy CCTV cameras unless you've got some seriously valuable stuff in the house in which case invest in the real thing.
Likewise dummy/real alarm system.
Invest in a safe large enough to take valuable/sentimental items and important documents.
Inform your local neighbourhood watch about your holiday plans and encourage your neighbours to actively house-watch for each other.
On the subject of timers my lamps are on timers permanently which means no-one can tell any unusual holiday patterns.
All this will deter the average dumb burglar which most of them are and the rest should be covered by your insurance.

skyeblue

We use Royal Mail's "Keepsafe" service to ensure our post is not delivered.
We have vertical blinds that are left half open, which shows that lights (operated by random timers) are on, but does not allow sight of the house contents.
We would never use a taxi firm to take us to the station/airport, for reasons stated by others - we drive to the airport. If we needed to be delivered to the rail station, we would take our luggage first, store it in lockers, and then when a taxi collected us, we would have minimal extras, and could be dropped somewhere near but not at the station.