Keep Your Home Safe When Leaving for the Holidays

If you are heading out of town for the holidays, for a long weekend or for a week, it’s a prudent idea to have a checklist of To-Do’s to ensure your home’s safety. Unfortunately this most wonderful time of year also brings about a rise in theft and burglaries. According to CNN Money burglaries peak during December because would-be thieves know people are on vacation, or are out shopping or visiting all day. Here’s our thorough guide to keeping your home safe and looking “occupied”.

Use these sectioned checklists:

Electronic

Put timers on several lights around the house, including your holiday lights and front/back porch lights. Have the timers go on and off at varying times, so an obviously unoccupied, dark home doesn’t suddenly all light up at 4:30pm. Winter hours mean dark mornings–set timers to also turn on 6:00-9:00am.
Double-check indoor/outdoor holiday lights and wiring. Don’t leave any fire hazards.
Unplug your automatic garage door opener so thieves can’t open it with a universal remote.
If you’ve got a security system, a video doorbell, or motion detector lights, check to make sure it’s working properly.

Holidays, home, home safety, Travel, vacation

Making the Summer-to-Fall Transition: Prepare Your Home Before Winter Sets in

The end of summer is all about change. Leaves are starting to fall, the weather’s just beginning to cool (okay, at least it’s less hot). The kids are back in school, and everyone settles into familiar and busy daily routines. Soon, you won’t have as much time for those little household jobs that’ll pay off later – or cost you some money if they’re neglected – so do yourself a favor: put down the TV remote, pull on your sweatpants and t-shirt, and get ‘em done now.

Clean Inside and Out

The end of summer is a good time to clean and organize your house, room by room. As your family begins to transition to fall clothing, start putting away the summer wardrobes. Store them safely in secure plastic containers, especially if they’ll be spending the winter in the attic or basement. Put away the doo-dads you picked up on vacation or your kids brought home from summer camp. If things have really gotten out of hand, you might consider having a professional home organizer help you tackle the clutter.

fall cleaning, home maintenance, preventative maintenance

Get Control of Your Personal Information – Know What to Shred

Personal information security is a hot topic these days. Between news of identity theft, mass data breaches and social media personal data security, the subject is front and center in our minds. We all want out personal information to be safe, whether it is our financial information, medical records, or social media data. Each year, we handle hundreds of documents that entail sensitive information, physical paper, our personal and financial paperwork.

It can be confusing to figure out what documents we need to keep, how long, and what documents we can dispose of, and how. Some individuals are so anxious about identity theft that they do not dispose of any paperwork at all! That results in massive paper piles, making it nearly impossible to find important documents when you need them. These piles can become an overwhelming burden. Paperwork clutter is a common problem, and very tedious and time consuming to tackle.

So, how can we protect our personal information (without getting buried in paper), at least the kind of personal information which commonly arrives in the mail? What to keep? How long? Why? We have some answers for you.

What Personal Information to Keep and How Long

Tax Returns: Keep copies of all your tax returns. Keep the back-up information and

paper clutter, personal information, shredding

7 Simple Ways to Protect Your Home When on Vacation

In early spring each year, Seattleites trade their winter boots for flip-flops, and take off in search of warmth and sun. Before you order your Uber to SeaTac, use these 7 simple strategies to protect your home while you are away.

No one wants to come home to find out that a pipe burst and flooded the interior of their house. Turn off your water before you leave to go on vacation. Find your main water shut off and turn off the water on your way out the door.
Some kitchen stoves have a safety lock feature on the control panel. You can temporarily disable the gas flow to the stove, should something unexpected, like an earthquake, happen while you are away.
Set a timer, so that a lamp or two turns on every night,

mail, paperwork, protect your home, vacation

Organize to Protect Your Identity

Data breach. Customer information stolen. Identity theft. Those words regularly appear in the news, making you, the consumer, angry. You wonder why companies can’t seem to figure it out–either stop collecting personal information or protect it!

Despite companies’ security efforts, the risk of identity theft isn’t going away. Criminals world-wide seem to be one step ahead. In 2016, over $16 billion was stolen from consumers, around $1,300 per victim.

data breach, identity theft, paperless

7 Things You Need to Know to Freeze Your Credit Today

A while back, my friend refinanced her house and then she froze her credit. We had been discussing identity theft when she told me about this. I’d never heard of this concept before. Times have changed I guess, because now phrases like “data breach” and “identity theft” seem to be a part of daily vernacular. Recently, one of the top three credit bureaus, Equifax, was hacked and now we are left to wonder whether our personal data is out there being sold on the “dark web.” (That’s another fun new term – look it up!)

The silver lining is that it is easy to freeze your credit and protect yourself from strangers opening credit cards and securing loans in your name. It took me all of 30 minutes to freeze my credit across all three agencies (you must do all three), Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Get a free credit report

You can get a free credit report once per 12 months. It’s a good idea

credit freeze, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion

Protecting Your Home