The Week Before You Leave Your Home Empty for the Holidays

Every year, the same scene repeats in neighborhoods everywhere: a family loads suitcases into a car the morning of a holiday trip, locks the front door, and drives off without a second thought about the empty house they’re leaving behind. Two weeks later, they return to a stack of newspapers on the porch, a thermostat that ran unchecked the entire time, and a nagging sense that something could easily have gone wrong. A little preparation the week before turns that risky scene into something far calmer.

Before: the house that looks obviously empty

An unattended home often announces itself without anyone meaning it to. Mail piles up in the box. Packages sit on the doorstep in plain view. Lights stay off at the same time every night, and a car that normally comes and goes simply disappears from the driveway. None of these signals are dramatic on their own, but together they tell anyone walking by that nobody is home, for an extended and predictable stretch of time.

Making the shift

The days before leaving are the best window to change these signals, not the morning of departure when there’s barely time to load the car. A short list handled a few days ahead makes the difference between a home that looks lived-in and one that looks obviously vacant.

• Pause mail and any regular deliveries, or arrange for a neighbor to collect them daily so nothing accumulates at the door.
• Put a couple of indoor lights on timers set to turn on and off at varied times rather than one predictable hour each evening.
• Ask a trusted neighbor to park a car in the driveway occasionally or simply glance at the property every few days.
• Unplug small appliances that don’t need to stay on, which also reduces any fire risk from devices left running unattended.
• Check that outdoor gates, sheds, and windows are actually locked, not just closed, since an unlocked side window is often the easiest point of entry.
• Adjust the thermostat to a reasonable setting rather than turning it off completely, especially in colder climates where frozen pipes are a real risk.
• Let one or two trusted people know the dates you’ll be away, along with a way to reach you, rather than announcing travel plans publicly online.

After: coming home to what you left

Families who handle these steps ahead of time tend to describe a very different return. The porch is clear. The house holds a steady temperature. A neighbor mentions they saw lights on a few nights and didn’t think twice about the place. Nothing dramatic happened, which is exactly the point: an empty home that doesn’t look empty rarely becomes a target in the first place, and a home that stays at a safe temperature doesn’t turn a holiday trip into a plumbing repair bill.

None of this requires expensive equipment or elaborate planning. Most of it is a short checklist that takes less than an hour to work through a few days before leaving. The real shift is in timing: treating home security as something to prepare for in advance, the same way you’d pack a suitcase, rather than as an afterthought remembered halfway down the driveway.