6 Tips for Protecting Your Valuables
There are a host of reasons people everywhere purchase nice things. Investment value, aesthetics, personal joy. Whether you collect art, enjoy high-end clothes, or have a predilection for nice jewelry, your valuables should be protected. Millions of people a year are victims of home burglaries, here are six tips from our local security professionals on how to protect your valuables from burglars and make sure you don’t become a statistic.
Hide Your Items in Unusual Places
If a burglar gains entry into your home, they are going to look in the most obvious and intuitive places for your high-value items. This is most likely going to be a safe. While safes are appealing and useful for protection from the elements for important documents like birth certificates or passports, they will be the first thing an intruder looks for as a place that will hold the highest volume of valuables. In order to keep those valuables protected, it is better to hide things in unusual places. Cash is easy to hide in a novel on a bookshelf, in the pocket of a jacket in a coat closet, or even in a plastic bag in your freezer. For items like jewelry, there are a variety of products for sale to help you hide them. For example, a safe that looks like a book that you can lock, place on your bookshelf, and have it seamlessly blend into its surroundings. If you keep your jewelry in a jewelry box, make sure it locks and is not easily transported. While a lock on a jewelry box may help with the appearance of security, if the burglar can just pick up the box and take it with them, only to break it open later when the threat of being caught is gone. This makes a lock on a jewelry box pacifying, but almost entirely unhelpful. Installing a lock on a drawer that can be used as a jewelry box will make it harder for thieves to take it, however, the lock on the drawer may still draw the burglar’s attention.
Insure Your Valuables
While this next tip isn’t preventative it can help with restitution. Make sure all of your valuable items are insured. Jewelry, art, expensive bags and clothes, and family heirlooms can all be insured with your insurance company. In the event that they are stolen, you will be able to regain the monetary value of the items. While it may be hard to replace the sentimentality of an item given as a gift, a one-of-a-kind painting, or an heirloom, recouping financial loss can help ease the sting.
Use Invisible Ink to Mark Your Items
This tip on how to protect your valuables may seem silly, but can be extremely helpful in any recovery effort for stolen goods. Writing your address on your larger items in invisible ink can help police when looking for your items. While many objects from home burglaries turn up in pawn shops, it can be hard to determine if that is the exact item you are missing if it doesn’t have something like a serial number to identify it. Having your address written on it is an easy way to prove that an item is yours if it is recovered.
Make Your Home Less Tempting
One of our top tips on how to protect your valuables is to make your home less tempting for burglars. If you have a home security system installed, keeping that sign in your front yard will help to deter anyone that may consider breaking into your home. If you purchase luxury items, make sure to discreetly dispose of the packaging. Nice shopping bags and boxes sticking out of your trash can is a call sign to home invaders that there are indeed items worth stealing inside your home. If you are going out of town, leaving a few lights on can also help keep burglars at bay. Even better, having some lights on a timer so that they turn on and off throughout the day, simulating a homeowner switching the lights on and off. This can also be done through a smart home security system that is accessible remotely through your cell phone.
Don’t Keep Large Amounts of Cash
Even though it is impossible to tell by looking at a home if a homeowner keeps large amounts of cash inside if it is found once inside it is nearly impossible to recover. Avoid keeping large amounts of cash in your home. If you have large stacks of cash, the safest place to keep it is in a lockbox at the bank. This way there is no need to deposit it if you want to keep it out of the banking system, but it is still protected from home invasion and can be taken out at any time.
Get a Security System
While all of these tips will help prevent or ease home burglary, the best way we know how to protect your valuables is to install a home security system and home security cameras. Many people think that a security system will only serve after the break-in has already happened by alerting the proper authorities, but FBI crime analysts have determined that 90% of home burglaries are deterred by installing a security system first and making it obvious that you have one. Even if a burglar does gain entry to a secured home, when they hear an alarm, more often than not, the burglar will quickly leave the property. The monthly cost of a residential or commercial security system is nothing in comparison to the loss of valuables, the cost of insurance, and the emotional loss of a burglary. Located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and serving the entire Grand Strand Area, we at Coggin Security have been securing families and businesses since 1995. As a family-owned business, we understand what it really means to protect your family and your home. Offering both commercial security solutions and residential security solutions, our knowledge spans across all areas of security. For any of your residential security or commercial security needs in Myrtle Beach fill out this form for a free quote here.
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