Home Security: My Philosophy
After several months of trying to make my home into a fortress, I came to terms with the fact that it’s just not possible to make a home 100% safe. There will always be a way in, or a system that someone can hack.
There is no such thing as foolproof home security. Anyone who says so is probably trying to sell you an alarm system.
I now have two simple goals for my home security:
Make my house harder to break into than the next guy’s
Go to sleep without worrying (so much)
No. 1 is pretty easy. My house doesn’t need to be impenetrable — it just needs to be better lit, better alarmed, and with less ground-floor access than my neighbors.
To borrow a phrase from my husband, we don’t need to be the fastest antelope in the herd, we just can’t be the slowest.
Part of my home security philosophy is understanding who we are and how we fit into the neighborhood ecosystem.
We don’t really have anything worth stealing, not that that stops the crazy, cracked-out spectrum of the burglary workforce. But my point is that we don’t have sexy road bikes that someone might follow us home for and stakeout for later. Our home is well-maintained, but it's nothing special for the neighborhood.
So my goal here is to make our our house less inviting to break into than the others on our block. That means we have a security gate for our front door (a uniquely San Francisco convention), lots innovative of security lights and reinforced doors and deadbolts.
We boarded up our street-facing garage windows from the inside, which is less of an eyesore than it sounds. The windows are frosted, so you can't see the plywood behind them. Except for that one pane the burglar broke out.
The garage windows facing our backyard came with burglar bars a la the previous owners of the house. Maybe they were trying to tell us something.
My house, by all accounts, is a pain in the ass to enter for anyone without a key.
So on that front, mission accomplished!
But No. 2 has proved much more illusive. When you have a family, it's hard to go to sleep at night without worrying about how well your house is protected. Especially after a recent break-in. I may never get to the point where I stop worrying, and maybe that’s what this blog is about.
Because “safer than the next guy” does not feel like enough when I’m doing bedtime with my 4-year-old. It feels completely inadequate as goal when I’m spooning him as he falls asleep and knowing that he is completely reliant on me to keep him safe.
I find that this god awful dissonance washes over me, where I feel like my heart might burst from all the love I feel for this sweet baby. And then I think about the possibility of someone hurting him, and it makes me want to vomit and die.
It’s times like these that I wish guns were a more realistic option for my family. Or that we could live in an actual fortress, complete with a moat and alligators.
Writing a blog dedicated to the pursuit of home security is a head trip, too. Due to the nature of this hobby, I’m never really free from thoughts about whether my home is secure enough or how to make it safer.
My therapist has told me this whole enterprise is a terrible idea for someone with several forms of clinical anxiety. But I’m not really paying her to tell me things I already know.
When I start to swirl like this, I come back to my mantra.
"We are not the slowest antelope in the herd."
"We are not the tastiest snack in the Serengeti."
FBI statistics show that most home invasions occur during the day when residents aren’t home.
Some people take Melatonin to sleep better at night. I consume data and optimize the shit out of my home security so I can go to sleep without worrying (as much).