Personal Safety
How to Protect Yourself in Your Home
from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Here are some tips for helping to keep single women and families safe.
Steps
- Put a solid wood door on your bedroom. This creates a "second barrier" even if someone were to break into your home while you slept. This would possibly give you few seconds to wake up, get yourself together, and grab your gun. It's also a safe place that you could run to if someone was breaking in a door or entering your house during the day.
- At night, keep the cellphone charged and in the bedroom with you. A burglar might somehow disable your house phones, making it impossible for you to call for help.
- Leave a light on at night in a room. This will give the impression that someone is still up and awake.
- Draw the curtains. Don't let people see straight into your house.
- Keep bushes around your house low. Or remove them. These are intruder/burglar hidey-holes and can be very attractive to someone wanting to hide. If your house is more open, the neighbors can help keep an eye on things for you. Don't forget to ask them to!
- Keep the area outside your house well-lit. Well-lit areas deter would-be intruders who have no shadows to hide themselves in.
- Keep doors and windows locked and shut at night.
- Even during the day, be aware of which rooms have open windows.
- If you can invest in windows that lock while open a small way, that is a great option.
- For sliding windows and doors, place a strong piece of dowel in the sliding slot to prevent the window sliding back any further.
- Always keep the front and back entrance doors locked. Keep keys close by, but not in sight range from outside.
- Invest in a burglar alarm. They scare away burglars as soon as they enter the house, or better still, there are some that will go off if anybody touches a window, door etc.
Tips
- Beware opening your door straight after seeing off dinner guests. Ask them to identify themselves first. Sometimes an intruder is watching and pretends to be a guest returning for something forgotten.
- Get trained in self defense and perhaps the use of firearms.
Warnings
- Beware using a gun if you are not trained; it can be turned against you and is illegal in some places.
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