If anything can go wrong, it’s bound to happen when you’re on holiday, right? Fretting over your home while you’re away can add an unnecessary layer of stress to your relaxed getaway, so we’ve pulled together 5 simple tips for making your home look lived in while you’re away.

Coming home from your honeymoon, a Mediterranean cruise or a trip to Bali can be gloomy, but returning home from a memorable time away and learning something has gone seriously wrong at home can be downright devastating.

Aside from refraining from announcing your holiday getaway to everyone on Facebook and their friends, there’s a few clever tricks that can be used to help give the impression that your home is still occupied.

We sat down with Natasha Morgan of My Home Watch for her 5 expert tips on how to keep your home safe during the holiday season.

Light timers are one of the most underrated home security tools on the market and work exceptionally well if you have a smart home set-up.

Using two light timers, set one to turn on lights in the living room when it gets dark, and then off just before a second timer turns on the lights in a bedroom for an hour or so in the evening.

Alternatively, if you have installed smart lights into your home, you can also manually switch lights on and off inside your home to give the impression that you’re actually at home.

Its one of the oldest tricks in the book, but asking a friend, relative, or even a professional property specialist to drop by your home can make a world of difference in the security stakes.

Ask your friend to collect your mail and any newspapers or junk mail from the driveway, give your front porch a quick sweep, and perform a small check on your house.

Leave a pair of your old shoes at the front door and at the back door as this will create the illusion that someone is inside.

If in the rare instance, someone was to look through a window, it’s also a good idea to leave a few things scattered around that make the home look lived in.

Nothing looks more like you’ve gone away than an immaculate living space, so leave an open book and a pair of glasses on the arm of a chair or a few toys in the middle of the floor.

When rubbish sits in a garage or outside for a week or more, it not only creates a bad smell (duh) but can attract the wrong people. If they catch wind someone isn’t home, they’ll be suspicious and more prone to snooping around.

If your rubbish is visible from street view, it’s also an automatic visual cue to thieves.

Just imagine – if everyone else’s bins are out and empty in the neighborhood while yours is stuffed to the brim and still in the driveway, it’s quite likely to signify that someone hasn’t been home for a long period of time.

Don’t think “We’re going away, we must draw all the blinds and curtains!” Having everything drawn can create too much attention to your property.

Consider asking someone, be it a hired property specialist, friend, relative or neighbour to open and close your curtains at appropriate times for you.

And aside from the above, use your common sense to not broadcast the fact you’re going away when you chat to too many people.