Drupal /node behavior

Drupal's default home page is a preview of nodes. We never use it. We always put in a custom home page. The problem is, "www.thesite.com/node" still exists and will return a list of recent nodes. Usually it looks broken and is completely useless. To keep it from being accessed by humans or spiders do the following

Create a 301 redirect from node to <front> by going here
/admin/config/search/redirect/add

From:  node

To: <front>