Weekly Maintenance for your Home

July – Week 29

Just like preventative maintenance on your car, if you take care of a few small items around the house every week, you can avoid many emergency breakdowns and expensive repairs.

Security

Security is more than a lock or an alarm. It includes landscaping and habits. I guess the most obvious point about all of this is that if you don't lock a door, the lock will do you no good.

Secure Environment

Take an inspection walk around your house. Do you have lights that will prevent people from tripping along walkways and stairs? Do they come on automatically by timers, nightfall or motion? If they are not automatic, does the whole family cooperate at turning them on and off at appropriate times? How about shrubs and trees? Do they block the lights, or provide hiding places for a thief? Probably one of the worst landscaping mistakes is having thick shrubbery next to a basement window, allowing someone to take his time breaking into your house without any neighbours even able to see him.

SECURE HABITS:

Part of security is being honest about the families' security habits. If the whole family works together at maintaining a secure house, you don't need much high tech stuff to protect your home. The more you keep finding loose ends, the more you need automation gadgets that will light, lock and notify for you. One very interesting innovation in high tech security systems for families with school age children and working parents is the alarm system that e-mails to the office when the kid arrives from school and turns off the alarm system.

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