All of my life I’ve been adamant about keeping my doors locked. Both at home and in my car. I used to keep my bedroom door locked when I was growing up to keep my siblings from going in there to steal things from me. Fortunately my parents gave me a locking door knob after I caught several of my siblings stealing from my piggy bank!
My concern for my own safety increased when I became a young adult and was attacked and almost raped in my own apartment! I started taking karate classes and tried to get my apartment’s management to look into the installation of a REAL security system; not just a chain lock on the apartment doors! Back in those days, however, security systems were unheard of for individual apartments! So I ended up persuading the manager to give me an exception to the “no pets” rule and buy a dog for protection.
Ever since then I’ve been a strong advocate for having a dog or two in the house for security. I think a barking dog will scare off a burglar faster than any alarm system will! But then again, you don’t have to walk and feed and groom and scoop up after an alarm system, do you?
Recently I’ve been reading a lot of articles that give tips on how to stay safer at home. I like the one about using motion detection lights around the perimeter of the house. I also like the one about using timers to turn lights on and off at various times through the house.