Holiday Travel: Tips for Leaving Your Apartment Empty for Long Periods of Time

Holiday travel provides an opportunity to take a break from your normal routine and possibly meet up with loved ones you don’t often get to see. However, when you leave your apartment empty while traveling, you increase the risk of having your apartment broken into. Follow these tips to decrease the likelihood of a danger in your apartment while you’re gone:

Hire an Apartment-Sitter

If feasible, you can ask a trusted local friend or relative to move into your apartment during your holiday travel. This is especially convenient if you have pets and plants that need care, too. The apartment will naturally continue to have a lived-in appearance and burglars are less likely to target your apartment.

Ask Someone to Make Your Apartment Look Lived-In

If you can’t find someone to move in full-time when you’re away, ask a trusted neighbors, friend or relative to at least check in on your apartment. There are a number of tasks that they can perform to make your apartment look less abandoned, such as collecting mail and the newspaper and turning on lights in the apartment in the evening. If it snows in your area over the holidays and your landlord doesn’t take care of shoveling, it’s important to ask someone to shovel the walkway to your door if applicable as well, otherwise it will be obvious that no one has been in or out of your apartment since it snowed.

Make Sure Your Mail and Newspapers Are Collected

Uncollected mail and newspapers is an easy way to identify who hasn’t been home for long periods. If you can’t find anyone to collect mail or papers for you, you may want to ask your newspaper carrier to cancel or temporarily cease your delivery while you’re gone. You can also ask the post office to hold or forward your mail for a limited time. The post office can hold mail free of charge anywhere from three to thirty days. They may forward mail at a cost for anywhere from two weeks to up to a year.

Set Up an Automatic Light Timer

Automatic light timers can give your apartment the appearance of being lived-in while you’re gone on holiday travel. During holiday travel, even a few holiday lights on your balcony or window can help fool would-be home invaders. If possible, have the timer set off to turn on and off the lights at slightly different times each evening; if the timer turns the lights on and off at the same time, an especially watchful burglar might figure out that you’re using an automatic timer.

Unplug Appliances

Home invasion isn’t the only danger of leaving an apartment empty for a long period during your holiday travel. Freak electrical accidents or unnecessarily plugged-in appliances can cause small fires. To be on the safe side, unplug all unnecessary appliances if no one is going to apartment-sit for you. You can leave your lights plugged into your automatic timer, but you may as well unplug the TV, computers, cookingware and other appliances. It’s especially important that you have heaters unplugged when no one is there to supervise them.