Locks and Holiday Safety

With the holidays coming up, one of the biggest issues that should be taken into careful consideration is not just the safety of your personal belongings, but the safety of you, yours, and your home. When traveling, so many things can go wrong, but thankfully, there are ways to safeguard your property, even when it’s out of your hands.

Suitcase / Luggage Locks

Despite the Transportation Security Administration’s tendency to cut open locks and inspect your belongings, their frequent intrusion is still worth protecting your luggage by utilizing a key-based lock on the zippers. By simply clamping a small lock around the zippers of any part of the luggage that contains valuables, you significantly decrease the chances of baggage handlers or strangers rifling through your personal property and violating your space.

These types of locks can be purchased at most stores, and come in both key-based and combination-based. They’re relatively inexpensive, and if you’ve forgotten one before heading through security it’s likely that you can purchase one before reaching the terminal. Conversely, you can just bring your luggage through, purchase a lock at one of the any stores in the terminal, and check your baggage at your gate.



(Photo)

Hotel Room Locks

All but old school motels have adopted a keyless entry for their rooms, utilizing a keycard to allow tenants to enter their rooms. It’s more secure in that it prevents people from picking the locks, and the keys are reprogrammed for each new tenant. As an added bonus, all hotels contain either chain locks or additional swinging locks similar to a chain, so as to add an added sense of security.



Hotel Safes

Additional security is often found in the form of hotel room safes. When spending long periods of time away from the hotel, it’s not uncommon to leave expensive items such as laptops lying around. While it may seem secure, be aware that housemaids often come and go, tidying up the room and changing linens on a daily basis. That’s not to say that room service is going to steal anything, but in the end it’s better to be safe than to return to your hotel and discover all of our valuables have been stolen.



(Photo)

Locking Up Your House

If leaving for an extended period of time, you should always make sure that your home is secure. The first line of defense is letting a friend or neighbor know that you’re going to be gone for awhile, and providing them with a key so they can check in on the house, feed the pets, collect the mail, and the like. Beyond this, the neighbor or friend acts as a sort of watch dog, letting you know if there’s any usual activity in your home.

This is where a video surveillance system will come in handy, but let’s be honest. Most people don’t have video surveillance in their home, or in some cases even an alarm system. As such, making sure the doors and windows are locked, and even adding some additional locks might be the best way to assure you don’t return home to a ransacked living room and all of your valuable missing.

(Photo)
Posted on November 20, 2012 at 9:00 AM