Why Burglars Will Skip Your House If You Do This Tonight: The 30-Minute Home Fortress Plan

Back in 1996, I got called to a rental on a dirt road outside Kalispell, Montana, to change the locks after the last tenant went to prison. His name was Denny Pruitt, and Denny was a burglar, a good one, who'd worked that end of the county for years. Here's what got me. There'd been break-ins up and down that road, and Denny's was the one house nobody ever cracked. I counted maybe $40 of hardware in the whole place. He built the one house a man like Denny couldn't get into for less than I was charging scared families for the sign in their yard. And it wasn't one clever gadget.

What Denny did was walk his own house, one lap, and shut down a short list of weak spots nobody ever looks at. Not one of them cost real money. That lap is the whole difference between his house and the ones he hit. I spent 35 years as a locksmith. I sold those overpriced systems before I couldn't stomach it, and I picked the cheap locks and the expensive ones. So, here's a taste of what's on that lap. Somewhere on that lap is one thing you already own sitting in your house right now that shuts a sliding glass door so tight a grown man throws his shoulder into it and gets nowhere. Costs you nothing. And there's a cord hanging in your garage that a stranger can hook from outside in about 6 seconds with a coat hanger. On the lap, you take that trick away from him for the price of a candy bar. 13 fixes, one lap, front door to the backyard.

Some take 2 minutes, a couple take 15. And if all you get to is the first three, you've done the part that matters most. The last fix costs nothing, takes 10 minutes, and it decides whether he even walks up your driveway. If you've got people counting on you to lock up at night, subscribe. All right, let's walk it. Step one.

The front door and the lock you already paid for. Here's a number that ought to bother you.

More burglars come in through the front door than any other way into your house.

About a third of them, the single most common way in, and a big chunk of those don't force a thing. They try the knob, the knob turns, and they walk in like they live there. A researcher down at a university in Charlotte sat with better than 400 convicted burglars and asked them straight, and it lined up with everything the job already taught me.

The front door is the fat, easy target because a stranger walking in your front door doesn't look like anything. A stranger climbing your back fence does.

So, step one costs you nothing and takes about 9 seconds. Throw the deadbolt, not the button in the knob, that's a toy. I can slip that with a soda can.

The deadbolt above it, the one most folks have and half of them never turn.

Throw it every single time, even when you're home, even when you're just running to the store. Make it the last thing your hand does on the way out. 9 seconds. That already puts you ahead of a quarter of the houses on your street.

Step two. The screws holding your door shut are too short, and I mean right now, on the door you're picturing. Go look at your strike plate, that metal plate on the frame where the deadbolt lands. Take out one of those screws. I'll bet you it's about half an inch, 3/4 at most. That little screw bites into nothing but the soft trim of the jam. When somebody kicks your door, that's what gives. Not the lock, not the deadbolt, the wood around a half-inch screw. The whole frame splits and the door comes in, deadbolt and all, still locked, hanging off a chunk of pine. The fix is a handful of 3-in screws, $3 at any hardware store. You back out the little ones and drive the long ones into the same holes, and this time they punch clear through the jamb and bite into the framing stud behind it, the actual bones of your house. Now, when he kicks, he's not kicking a trim board. He's kicking the wall. 10 minutes with a screwdriver you already own. And it's the closest thing to a magic trick on this whole lap. Denny had these in every door in that Montana house. First thing he did, and the cheapest. Step three, and we finish the front door. A reinforcement plate. The screws fixed the frame. Now we fix the door itself, right where the lock goes through it. On a lot of doors, the hollow feeling ones especially, the wood around the lock is thin, and a hard hit can crack the door around the latch even when the frame holds. A reinforcement plate is a metal wrap that goes around that edge and spreads the force out, so there's no single weak spot left to split. 20, 30 dollars, 15 minutes if you take your time. Couple of screws and a little patience. And here's how you know you've won at the front door. Stand outside, shut it, and give it an honest shove with your shoulder.

If it doesn't budge, if it feels like shoving the wall next to it, you've won.

A door like that gets skipped, and you did the whole thing for about the price of 1 month of a monitoring bill you'd have paid every single month for the rest of your life. Now, the front door is the biggest single piece of this, but it's still one piece. I got tired of watching folks fix one door and feel safe, so I put the whole room-by-room plan in one place, cheap fixes first.

It's called Skip My House, and it's pinned in the comments. Back to the lap.

Step four, the back slider. And here's the thing I promised you at the start. Slide your patio door open and look in the track.

Now, look at the latch. That little curved hook is about all that's holding that big pane of glass shut, and it is flimsy. A lot of them you can pop by lifting and shaking the door. No tools.

But you don't fix the latch. You reach for the thing you already own, a length of wood, an old broom handle, a dowel, a cut piece of 2 by 4. You lay it in the track behind the door, and now the door physically cannot slide, latch or no latch. He can jimmy that little hook all night and the door won't move an inch because a stick doesn't care about the lock. Costs you nothing, takes 2 minutes. That's the one I told you a grown man could throw his shoulder into and get nowhere. And it's true because he's not fighting a latch anymore. He's fighting a board wedged in a steel track. This is the back door cousin of what we did up front. Same idea. Take the fight off the little lock and put it onto something that doesn't break. Step five.

And we're still at that slider because there's one more move they use. They lift. A lot of these doors, if you grab the panel and heave up, the whole thing pops out of the bottom track and lifts right out, stick and all. 2 minutes to shut that down. You drive a couple of screws into the top track up above the door and back them out until the heads hang down just far enough that the panel can't rise past them. Now it can't lift and it can't slide. A few cents in screws and that panel that used to come out like a window screen is now a wall of glass that doesn't go anywhere. Let me step off the lap for a second because I want you to understand who we're really keeping out. It's not the movie villain. There's no man in a black mask studying your blueprints. The fellow who's going to test your house is lazy on purpose, and that's his whole business model. He wants in and out in under 10 minutes. He wants quiet. He wants easy. And the second your house stops being easy, he's already thinking about the next street. Everything on this lap is built around the two things he can't stand, time and noise. A stick in a track costs him time. A door he can't kick costs him time and it costs him noise. That expensive box on the wall? It rings a phone two states away and does nothing to the door in front of him. The industry sells you the feeling of safety by the month. What actually keeps him out is a screwdriver and one boring evening. And the single most important thing on this whole lap is the last one, the free one, but we've got to earn our way there. Back to the windows.

Step six, the first floor windows, all of them. Eight out of 10 break-ins come in on the ground floor and after the doors, those wi

frame splits and the door comes in, deadbolt and all, still locked, hanging off a chunk of pine. The fix is a handful of 3-in screws, $3 at any hardware store. You back out the little ones and drive the long ones into the

same holes, and this time they punch clear through the jamb and bite into the framing stud behind it, the actual bones of your house. Now, when he kicks, he's not kicking a trim board. He's kicking the wall. 10 minutes with a screwdriver

you already own. And it's the closest thing to a magic trick on this whole lap. Denny had these in every door in that Montana house. First thing he did, and the cheapest. Step three, and we finish the front door. A reinforcement

plate. The screws fixed the frame. Now we fix the door itself, right where the lock goes through it. On a lot of doors, the hollow feeling ones especially, the wood around the lock is thin, and a hard hit can crack the door around the latch

even when the frame holds. A reinforcement plate is a metal wrap that goes around that edge and spreads the force out, so there's no single weak spot left to split. 20, 30 dollars, 15 minutes if you take your time. Couple of

screws and a little patience. And here's how you know you've won at the front door. Stand outside, shut it, and give it an honest shove with your shoulder.

If it doesn't budge, if it feels like shoving the wall next to it, you've won.

A door like that gets skipped, and you did the whole thing for about the price of 1 month of a monitoring bill you'd have paid every single month for the rest of your life. Now, the front door is the biggest single piece of this, but

it's still one piece. I got tired of watching folks fix one door and feel safe, so I put the whole room-by-room plan in one place, cheap fixes first.

It's called Skip My House, and it's pinned in the comments. Back to the lap.

Step four, the back slider. And here's the thing I promised you at the start. Slide your patio door open and look in the track.

Now, look at the latch. That little curved hook is about all that's holding that big pane of glass shut, and it is flimsy. A lot of them you can pop by lifting and shaking the door. No tools.

But you don't fix the latch. You reach for the thing you already own, a length of wood, an old broom handle, a dowel, a cut piece of 2 by 4. You lay it in the track behind the door, and now the door

physically cannot slide, latch or no latch. He can jimmy that little hook all night and the door won't move an inch because a stick doesn't care about the lock. Costs you nothing, takes 2 minutes. That's the one I told you a

grown man could throw his shoulder into and get nowhere. And it's true because he's not fighting a latch anymore. He's fighting a board wedged in a steel track. This is the back door cousin of what we did up front. Same idea. Take

the fight off the little lock and put it onto something that doesn't break. Step five.

And we're still at that slider because there's one more move they use. They lift. A lot of these doors, if you grab the panel and heave up, the whole thing pops out of the bottom track and lifts right out, stick and all. 2

minutes to shut that down. You drive a couple of screws into the top track up above the door and back them out until the heads hang down just far enough that the panel can't rise past them. Now it

can't lift and it can't slide. A few cents in screws and that panel that used to come out like a window screen is now a wall of glass that doesn't go anywhere. Let me step off the lap for a

second because I want you to understand who we're really keeping out. It's not the movie villain. There's no man in a black mask studying your blueprints. The fellow who's going to test your house is lazy on purpose, and that's his whole

business model. He wants in and out in under 10 minutes. He wants quiet. He wants easy. And the second your house stops being easy, he's already thinking about the next street. Everything on this lap is built around the two things

he can't stand, time and noise. A stick in a track costs him time. A door he can't kick costs him time and it costs him noise. That expensive box on the wall? It rings a phone two states away

and does nothing to the door in front of him. The industry sells you the feeling of safety by the month. What actually keeps him out is a screwdriver and one boring evening. And the single most important thing on this whole lap is the

last one, the free one, but we've got to earn our way there. Back to the windows.

Step six, the first floor windows, all of them. Eight out of 10 break-ins come in on the ground floor and after the doors, those windows are the next easiest way in. Better than one in five burglars comes through a first floor

window and most of those were simply left unlocked. So, the first move is free.

Walk the whole first floor tonight and check that every window is locked. Not shut, locked. People close a window against the rain and never flip the latch. And that latch is the whole ballgame. Then, same idea as the slider.

Most single hung windows, the kind that slide up, can take a cheap pin lock or a dowel cut to length that sits in the track so the window can't raise more than an inch or two. A few dollars for a

pack of pins. You drill a small hole, drop the pin in, and now that window opens far enough for a breeze and stops dead before it opens far enough for a man. Walk the whole floor, ground level, every window. 20 minutes for the house

and you've closed the second easiest way in, the one that isn't even a door. Step seven, the garage and the cord I told you about at the start. If you've got an automatic garage door, look up. There's an

emergency release, a little handle on a red cord hanging from the trolley. It's there so you can open the door by hand in a power outage. Trouble is, a fellow outside can fish a hook or a bent coat

hanger through the top of the door, catch that cord, pull it, and your garage is unlocked from the outside in about 6 seconds. I've watched it done.

It's on videos all over the place. The fix costs about a dollar. You zip tie the release lever so a casual pull won't trip it, or you slip a little plastic shield over it, the kind made just for

this. Either way, the coat hanger trick is dead. 30 seconds of work. And that's the thing I promised you, the 6-second way in that you shut down for the price of a candy bar. If you ever do lose

power and need the manual release, you snip one zip tie and you're back in business. Step eight. Still in the garage, and this is the one people forget every time, the door from your garage into your house. Folks treat that

door like an inside door, a hollow thing with a button lock in the knob, because who's going to be in the garage? But think it through. The second somebody's got your garage open, and you just saw how fast that can happen, they're

standing inside, out of sight of the whole street, with all the time in the world to work on a flimsy interior door.

So we treat that door like what it really is, an exterior door. It gets a real deadbolt. It gets the 3-in screws from step two in its strike plate. Same fix, same $3 handful, same 10 minutes. If you did the front door,

you already know how. Do it again on this one, because a burglar in your garage is a burglar the neighbors can't see. Stop the clock again, because here's the part that changes how you see your own street. When that fellow walks

or drives through a neighborhood, he's not looking for the richest house, he's looking for the easiest one. He's reading houses the way you read a menu.

Dark corners, tall bushes he can work behind, a slider with nothing in the track, a garage cracked open, no sign anybody's paying attention. And the moment he sees a house that's clearly awake and clearly hardened, better than half of them, six in 10 by the count of

those convicted burglars in that study, just move on to an easier target. That's the whole game. You are not trying to build a fortress that stops a determined army. You're trying to be a little harder than the house next door, so his

own laziness carries him past you. Every fix on this lap is a reason for him to pick somebody else. And the biggest reason of all is the last one we'll do, the free 10-minute lap around your own yard, because that one decides what he

sees before he ever comes close. We'll get there. Back to it. Step nine. Now we move from stopping him to scaring him off before he tries. And the first one is a video doorbell. Remember what I told you, that

every one of those burglars knocks first. They ring the bell or bang on the door to see if anybody's home. A video doorbell answers that knock even when your house is empty. You get the alert on your phone at work.

You tap it. And you talk to the man on your porch. Nine times out of 10, a voice coming out of that little camera asking, "Can I help you?" is enough. He came for an empty house, and the empty house just

talked to him. The cheap ones do this fine. You don't need the top-shelf model with the monthly plan to say two words to a stranger and watch him leave. The battery ones you put up yourself in 20 minutes, no wires, no electrician. Get

one on the front door, where he knocks first. And this is right where good people burn money they didn't need to.

They buy the camera package and the monthly monitoring when a cheap doorbell and a stick in a track would have done more. I broke down every one of these gadgets, what earns its keep and what's just markup in the second book of Skip

My House. If you're about to spend real money on gear, read that one first. It's pinned in the comments.

Back to the lab. Step 10. And this one's almost too cheap to believe. A yard sign and a couple of window decals. You know those little signs that say this house is protected and the stickers for the windows. You can buy them for a few

dollars, no system required. Now, I'm not telling you to fake an alarm and call it a day, but remember, six in 10 of them leave the second they think a house is watched. A sign in the flower bed and a decal on the glass plant that

doubt before he ever steps in the yard. It's a few dollars of cardboard and sticker doing the same job the expensive sign does. And put it up next to the real doorbell from step nine and you're not even bluffing. The sign tells the

truth. Pound it in by the walk where he'll see it coming up the drive. Step 11.

Motion lights on the dark corners. I told you he loves cover. The shadows down the side of the house, the black corner by the back door where nobody can see him work. A motion sensor light takes that away. He steps into the side

yard and the whole thing lights up like a stage and there is nothing a man doing something he shouldn't hates more than being suddenly, brightly visible. The solar ones stick up with two screws or a strip of tape, no wiring, 10 or 15

dollars a piece. Put them where the darkness is, not where it's already bright. The side gate, the back door, the black spot behind the garage. Light is about the cheapest deterrent there is and it works on the exact thing he's counting on,

which is being able to do his business in the dark. Step 12. Make an empty house look lived in.

Here's something a lot of folks get backwards. The majority of break-ins don't happen in the dead of night. They happen in broad daylight on a weekday, in the middle of the afternoon, cuz that's when the house is empty and

everybody's at work and school. So, the job isn't to look scary at midnight, it's to never look empty at 2:00 in the afternoon. A lamp on a $5 timer set to click on in the evening, so the place

looks awake even when you're not home yet. A second one on a different timer in another room. And if you're gone for a few days, this is the big one. Stop the mail and the papers, or have a

neighbor grab them, because nothing says nobody's home like 3 days of flyers stuffed in the door. A pile of mail is a burglar's favorite sign. These cost a few dollars and a phone call, and they attack the one thing he's really hunting

for, which is an empty house nobody's watching. One more time off the lap, and this one's from the heart. Everything we've done tonight, the screws, the stick, the lights, the little handful of dollars, none of it is new. Your

grandparents did this without a name for it. They locked up out of habit. They kept the yard clear so they could see who was coming. They knew every car that belonged on the road and everyone that didn't. They didn't have an app. They

had attention. And they had the boring discipline to do the small things before anything went wrong, not after.

Somewhere along the way we got sold the idea that safety is something you buy and plug in and forget. It isn't. It's a habit, and it's the walk around your own house we're about to take. That's what Denny understood out there in Montana,

and it's the only thing that ever really separated his house from the ones he hit. He looked at his own home the way he looked at his targets. That's the last thing on the lap, and it's the most

important thing I'll say all night. Let's go do it. Step 13, the last one, the free one, the 1 9 families out of 10 never do. Walk your own house the way a burglar would. Go outside. Start at the

road, right where he'd first lay eyes on your place, and walk up slow. And this time, you're not you. You're him. And you ask one question at every step, if I wanted in, where would I go? Look at the bushes

under the windows, tall enough to hide a man crouching at the glass. They come down to knee height this weekend. Look at the gate, the one that's been standing open all summer. Look at that spot beside the garage the light doesn't

reach. Look for the ladder you left leaning by the fence, the one that gets him to the second floor. The second floor being the one place we never hardened because nobody thinks he can reach it. And the big one,

the fake rock, the top of the door frame, under the mat, the flower pot, anywhere you've hidden a key. He knows every one of those spots. They're the first places he checks because everybody uses the same five. If there's a key

hidden outside your house, go get it right now and bring it in. A hidden key is you handing him a deadbolt, the good deadbolt you just threw in step one for free. This is the fix that costs nothing

and changes everything because it's the only one that lets you see your home the way he sees it before he ever does. You do this walk once and you'll never look at your own front yard the same way

again. You'll spot the ladder. You'll spot the shadow. You'll bring in the key. And the next time a stranger drives down your road reading houses like a menu, looking for the easy one, his eyes will slide right over yours and go find

somebody who didn't do the walk. That's how your house becomes the one he skips.

So, that's the lap. 13 fixes, front door to the backyard, and almost none of it costs more than a nice lunch.

You don't have to do all 13 tonight. Here's the one thing I want you to actually get up and do before you go to bed. Go throw your deadbolt, then take one screw out of that strike plate and

see how short it is. Just look at it. That 5-minute look is what gets the rest of the lap done this weekend, because once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.

Then tell me something. Out of all 13, which one surprised you the most? The stick in the track, the coat hanger cord in the garage, the key you've got hidden by the door right now? Tell me down in

the comments. And tell me the one you're doing first. I read them. And if this got you looking at your own house a little differently tonight, I've got another one already up on your screen that goes deeper on exactly this. Go

take a look.