Someone asked CasaSugar about having a home security system in an rental. They have great tips for anyone, homeowner or renter alike. I do have a security system in my home, but I probably would not have one again, unless I was seriously concerned about the neighborhood or if I had a lot of priceless items that would be hard or impossible to replace.

Why wouldn’t I have a security system? Here’s why we wouldn’t have a security system again:

1. We don’t use it. Half the time we forget to turn it on, other times we don’t have time to turn it on because we’re dashing out the door.

2. It slows us down. See above. With 3 kids, I’m almost always dashing out the door at the last minute.

3. False alarms. Now, we don’t have much problem with this, but one of our neighbors does. Every single time the power goes out, their alarm goes off. We’ve had a few times where we’ve accidentally set the alarm to "away" when we really meant to set it to "stay" and walking around in the house set off the alarm. That’s heart-attack inducing for sure.

4. It doesn’t really increase police response time. When your alarm goes off, the security company calls first to make sure it isn’t a false alarm. Eventually, they call the police, but it’s a lot faster just to skip the middle man and call the police ourselves.

Alarms have their place, but in our family, it doesn’t fit into our lifestyle. What say you?