If you are a woman who is living alone, you need to consider your safety and security a top priority. Women that live alone often make perfect targets for burglars and rapists. There are far too many people out there today that prey on women, especially women who live on their own. There are things that you can do to eliminate your risk of becoming a victim of a crime.
Here they are:
Install an Alarm System
First of all, if you do not have a monitored alarm system installed in your home—get one! Alarm systems do so much more than protect your home and valuables from an intruder. An alarm system can protect you from an intruder.
When you are not home, an alarm system will help protect your property. But while you are at home, an alarm system will help protect your life.
When an intruder is brazen enough to break into your home in the middle of the night, you can bet he has no regard for anything, not your property and certainly not your life. An alarm system can alert you when someone is trying to break in.
If there is local sound, such as a loud siren, hopefully the intruder will be scared away by it. If not, your alarm monitoring center will be calling anyway to verify why your alarm went off. If you do not answer or answer and tell them something is wrong, help will be on the way immediately.
Make sure to inquire about portable panic buttons or key fobs when purchasing an alarm system. Both are portable and can be easily carried in your pocket or purse. These buttons look similar to car remotes and can signal for immediate help when pressed.
If a stranger approaches you outside of your home or tries to force you into your home, one press of your panic button will signal the monitoring center, who will then notify the police right away.
Hopefully you will never need to use your holdup buttons, but you will have great peace of mind knowing that if an emergency should occur, they will be there when you need them.
Target Harden the Perimeter of Your Home
If you live in an apartment, target-hardening the perimeter of your home can be a challenge. Since you can’t go out and buy new doors and windows, you will need to work with what you have.
You can make sure to have the locks changed before you move in. Never leave the old locks installed when you move into a new place. Who knows just how many spare keys to your apartment are floating around out there?
Inspect all windows and any other perimeter doors of your apartment. Make sure they are in good condition and burglar-proofed. If any door or windows are missing locks or need repaired, make sure to let the property owner know right away!
If you reside in a home that you own, you need to take the same safety precautions as an apartment dweller, but you have a little more flexibility.
Make sure your perimeter doors are made of solid construction and that you have good quality locks on all of them. Install Charley-bars on all sliding glass doors to prevent them from being lifted, and make sure all windows have working locks on them.
Update the lighting around your home to include motion sensor lights. Motion sensor lights are great burglary deterrents. A motion sensor light will light up if someone walks within range of it and usually scares them off when they do.
Having your landscaping updated can also deter burglars as well. Having high hedges or overhanging trees gives burglars easy places to hide while they contemplate their next move. Keeping up with your landscaping also helps deter “Peeping Toms” too.
There are literally thousands of tips to give women that live alone that we have barely even covered a fraction of them in this article. These tips however, were given to help women protect themselves in one of the areas they are most vulnerable for an attack—their own home.
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