Holiday season brings a real, specific risk that doesn’t apply the rest of the year: more packages sitting on porches, more people traveling, and more visible signs — through windows, trash, or social media — that a house has valuable gifts inside. A few targeted fixes address that specifically, rather than generic year-round security advice.
Gates, Patio Doors, and the Spots People Forget
If your property has a side or backyard gate, check that it actually locks — a lot of gates are functionally decorative, left unlatched out of habit. A padlock is a cheap fix. The same goes for sliding patio doors: it’s tempting to leave them cracked for the breeze, but that’s also an easy entry point if forgotten while you’re out for a holiday event. Motion-activated exterior lighting near these spots is inexpensive and genuinely deters someone testing whether a house is worth the risk.
The Garage Side Door Is Usually the Weak Point
The main garage door itself is usually fine, but the side entry door into the garage often has just a basic lock, and the interior door from the garage into the house is sometimes overlooked entirely. Both should have a real deadbolt — a garage is an easy, hidden way into a house once someone’s inside it, and holiday storage (wrapped gifts, decorations) makes garages a more appealing target this time of year specifically.
Don’t Let Packages Advertise You’re Away
A pile of delivered packages is one of the clearest signals a house is unoccupied or that gifts are sitting inside. Have packages delivered to a neighbor, a locked mailbox or parcel locker if your building has one, or scheduled for pickup at a delivery location instead. If a trusted neighbor is willing to collect packages and mail while you travel, that’s worth arranging ahead of time — and if they’ll also need a key for that or to check on the house, make sure it’s someone you’d trust with a working key to your home, not just someone convenient.
Rekeying Is Worth Considering If You’ve Handed Out Keys
If you’ve had contractors, a cleaning service, or a past house-sitter with a key over the past year and you’re not sure every copy has been accounted for, the holidays — when your home is more likely to have valuables inside — are a good prompt to rekey. A locksmith can also set up a master key system so a single key covers multiple locks around the property, which is convenient if you’re managing gates, a shed, and the house all at once.
ER Locksmith Miami handles rekeying, gate and patio door hardware, and garage door lock upgrades throughout the Miami area, and can do a quick walkthrough of your property before the holidays if you want a second set of eyes on what’s actually vulnerable.