By / San Diego Moving

Maintaining Security During Your Move

How To Maintain Your Security During Your Move

Security During Your Move: When you look at the timeline for your move, there are a few instances where your possessions and property will be at the greatest risk. Finding solutions to your particular threats and vulnerabilities will be highly conditional, but there is some general advice you should follow in order to protect your property at each step of the moving process. While you are moving, your property is going to be the most vulnerable. The best thing that you can do is always have someone monitoring open doors, the moving truck, exposed boxes, etc. Station your movers, friends, or roommates, at all the points along the moving trail. Lock up whatever is not being attended. This will likely make moving faster as you will be using an assembly line style loading/unloading process.

A team of professional movers can handle these aspects of security much better than a team of amateurs, but for your own peace of mind, you can look after your new home or the moving truck. When the moving process is compartmentalized into segments, everyone’s job becomes more manageable. Do not have each person do every job simultaneously, or your property will end up going unattended, and the chances of a snatch and grab theft will dramatically increase.

Remember to

• Keep someone stationed nearby open doors and unloaded items.
• Use locks to secure all closed doors, including the moving truck, while they are left unattended.
• Call a professional moving company if you do not have the resources to handle your move.

In the New Home

The security of your new home is extremely important to establish before you move in. Effective security will entail making your new residence safe for everyone that will be living there. That means evaluating your new home looking for potential threats to children and any pets you are taking with you on your move. This should be handled as you are moving in, and what you want to be done should be decided before your moving day.

One of the best things you can do for your security is to upgrade your locks. Now if you are moving into an apartment, there might be restrictions on what you can do to your locks. Supers and property managers may need to have a spare key or have restrictions on rekeying or lock changes. Regardless, you can install a smart lock on your front door that can increase your security without affecting the lock cylinder that your landlord has a key to.

Remember to

• Evaluate your home’s security and risks before your move-in day so you can install your security upgrades as you move in/unpack.
• Consider the safety risks your new home presents to any pets and children that might live or visit.
• Upgrade the security of your locks however possible.

Storage Units

While you are moving there might be the need to place some items in storage. This could be long-term storage or a very temporary measure, but in either case, you do not want your stored property to be vulnerable to theft or damage. Professional movers can make sure that your property is moved into a storage unit in a manner that provides the most security. This is done by obscuring the most valuable items in the back of the unit and placing larger and heavier pieces to block access.

Placing items in a storage unit effectively can be tricky enough, but you should also be securing the unit with a quality padlocks. A good guiding principle for storage locks is to spend 10% of the total value of what you are storing on a padlock. This makes sure that you are not investing in a $300 lock to protect bags of clothing, or using a $15 lock to protect your antique furniture and art collection. Also be sure that you have assessed the security of the storage center. If security is lax in the complex, criminals will have more time to overcome your security.

Remember to

• Place your property inside the storage unit in a way that obscures the most valuable items and blocks a criminal’s access to the back of the unit.
• Use a padlock that represents the value of what you are storing so that you do no over or under-invest in security.
• Assess the security of the storage complex to know how committed the company is to protect your unit.

Closing Thoughts

The most important thing to remember is to never be comfortable with your level of security. Always be fine-tuning your level of protection. The best thing you can do to protect your valuables is to never leave them unattended, but that is not always an option during every step of the moving process. So be sure to think about what you can realistically do. Stay grounded and stay safe.

Guest post by Ralph Goodman at United Locksmith