How to Safeguard Your Home Before Leaving for an Extended Vacation

The longer you are away from home, the more time small problems have to turn into big ones. A week-long trip is usually fine. Three weeks, six weeks, or a winter in a warmer climate is a different category entirely — pipes freeze, thieves notice the quiet, plants die, and the deck package accumulates on the porch like a signal. A good pre-vacation checklist does not take long and pays for itself every single time.

Make the house look lived-in

Most burglars are opportunists who avoid houses that look occupied. The simplest changes make a huge difference. Set two or three smart plugs with interior lamps on different schedules so the light pattern changes night to night. Put a radio or TV on a timer to come on in the evening. If you have curtains, leave them roughly the way you normally do — fully drawn curtains for weeks look as suspicious as an empty driveway. Nothing about your house from the street should say “nobody here for a while.”

Stop the mail and packages

A mailbox overflowing with flyers or a porch stacked with packages is the clearest possible sign that the house is empty. In the US, you can submit a free hold mail request through the post office for up to 30 days. Longer trips require a friend or neighbor. Pause your newspaper. If you use delivery services, either redirect them to a neighbor’s address, pause your subscriptions, or ask the neighbor to clear the porch within a day of anything arriving.

Water, sewer, and plumbing

A burst pipe while you are away is the most expensive problem on this list. If you are leaving in winter in a cold climate, turn the main water supply off, drain the pipes by opening the taps briefly, leave interior doors open for airflow, and set the heat to at least 55 degrees. In warmer weather, shutting off the water main is still the safest move — most plumbing failures happen when nobody is home to hear the drip. Check your washing machine hoses and water heater age before you leave. Old rubber hoses on a washer are a classic “it failed while we were in Italy” story.

HVAC and power

Set the thermostat to a reasonable range — not off. Letting a house freeze or broil saves almost no money and invites real damage: frozen pipes in winter, warped floors and humidity problems in summer. A smart thermostat you can monitor from the app is a good investment if you do not have one. Unplug small electronics and chargers you will not need running — not for the energy savings, but to reduce the chance of a failed component starting a fire in an empty house.

Refrigerator and pantry

Eat or freeze the perishables in the week before you leave. Pull the trash the morning of departure — a kitchen trash bag left for three weeks is a science project. For longer trips, empty the ice maker bin and turn the ice maker off to prevent the “ice gets funky, water line problem, now your floor is wet” sequence. If you are leaving for months, clean the fridge out, prop the door open, and unplug it. The energy savings pay for the cleaning time.

Lawn, plants, and yard

An unmowed lawn is a tell. Arrange for lawn care to continue on its normal schedule, or pay a neighborhood kid to keep it cut. If you have potted plants, move them under a covered spot with drip irrigation, give them a neighbor to water, or bundle them together in a bathtub with a tub of water and a few cotton wicks — low-tech self-watering that works for a couple of weeks. Houseplants can survive longer than most people think if moved away from windows before you leave.

Security systems and smart devices

If you have a camera doorbell or exterior cameras, test them before you leave and set up mobile alerts that go to more than just you. A smart lock on the front door, a battery-powered interior camera or two, and a handful of door/window sensors is a low-cost security upgrade that pays off every trip. If you have an alarm service, put them on notice of your dates and give them your neighbor’s contact as a secondary key holder.

The one-page briefing for your house-sitter or neighbor

Leave a single page with the essentials: the water main shutoff location, the breaker box location, the thermostat instructions, the WiFi password, the alarm code, the vet’s contact if there are pets, your emergency numbers, and the days your trash goes out. Text a copy to the person helping out before you leave. A clear briefing turns a two-hour favor into a five-minute one and dramatically reduces the chance of a missed detail becoming a problem.

Doors, windows, and exterior

Walk the perimeter the day before you leave. Every window locked. Every exterior door locked. Every sliding door dowel or lock bar in place. Garage door closed and the automatic opener either unplugged or set to be controlled from your phone. Side gate locked. Anything valuable visible through a window — a laptop, a wallet on the kitchen island — moved out of sight. Take a quick video walk-through so you can verify from the road that nothing was missed.

A short packing-to-go checklist

Morning of: trash out, dishwasher run empty, laundry started, water main off, thermostat set, lights on timers, plant wicks in place, valuables secured. It is a 15-minute routine once you have done it twice. Save the list in your phone and run it every trip. The trips where nothing goes wrong are the ones where you ran the checklist.

None of this takes long — and all of it saves the worst phone call on a vacation: the one from a neighbor saying something happened at the house. A house that looks lived-in, that is plumbed and powered sensibly, and that has one trusted human checking in once a week is a house you can leave and enjoy.