What to do when your house is broken into

What do you do when your house gets broken into? What steps should you take? How do you make sure that it does not happen again?

My house got broken into this afternoon. They stole my piggy bank. Eight and a half months into home ownership, and I have to replace a door. The worst part is that they covered my Christmas tree in glass; since the door was made of safety glass, it shattered and left a fine coat of sharpness over a vast majority of my basement. We had the Christmas tree right in front of the door to acclimate it and planned on bringing it upstairs tonight to decorate it. Now, it would be too dangerous. I will probably put it out in front of the house for a couple weeks.

My wife and I got home at about the same time tonight. We immiediately noticed the change on the kitchen floor and part of my fire engine piggy bank just inside the door. We assumed that the cat had been having a whole lot of fun. After she had been fed and went downstairs, though, we heard her crunching through something. It turned out to be all of the glass from our sliding glass door. We took a quick look around and called the police.

The evidence of somebody being in our house was not extensive. It consisted of:

1. The hole in the door
2. The change on the floor
3. The open drawer in the night stand next to the bed
4. The jewelry box lid was askew
5. There were cigarette ashes in the laundry basket

My guess is that some kids broke in, stole the change, and left. None of the movies, or computers, or video games were gone. The only drug worth stealing was untouched. We might be missing a $3 necklace and a silk skirt, but we aren’t positive about that.

What do you do in a situation like this? We called the police, and they sent somebody to look around and take statements and pictures. We swept up some of the glass, but it would have taken all night and we were hungry by then so I called my boss and got permission to borrow the shop-vac from work. That will make it much easier to clean up in the morning. I left some messages with contractor friends of mine, and will follow up with them tomorrow.

My neighbor is great; he came over with an 8 foot sheet of plywood and nailed it up to the side of my house for me. Once we have had a better chance to determine what is missing, we will report the break in to our insurance company. I want to avoid filing a claim, however, because the deductible will probably cover the door and I do not really want my rates to go up. Thankfully, nobody was home and the cat seems unhurt. Other than the door being destroyed there was no other damage to the house or our belongings. I informed a few of my other neighbors about the break in so that they would be aware of it, and I spread moth balls out on the ground outside the broken door to keep any mice or other critters from getting too curious about our heat that is escaping tonight.

My uncle recently replaced a door in his house, so I might be able to just buy his doors off of him if we can not find something to replace the slider with. We did not like that door to begin with, and now at least we have motivation to replace it sooner rather than later. What else could you suggest that I should have done? What should be my goals this weekend? I want to get the glass cleaned up so that the litter box can go back into the basement, and I want to fix the gigantic hole to the outside. Has this ever happened to you? Share your story in the comments.