How to Make Your Home Inhospitable to 8-Legged Invaders
1. Clutter
Get rid of clutter in basements, garages, and storage rooms. You don’t want to encourage web-building in dark and cluttered spaces.
2. Wood Piles
Don’t store firewood close to your house or cottage. Also ensure you’re not smuggling spiders into your house when you bring in a bundle of firewood.
3. Cracks and Crevices
Seal cracks and crevices around doors, entry points, windows, and building foundations.
4. Outdoor Debris
Clear debris from the perimeter of your residence.
5. Natural Landscape Features
Minimize hiding spaces and nesting sites by trimming trees and shrubs.
6. Seal garbage cans.
7. Replace ripped door and window screens.
8. Yellow Colour Light Bulbs
Switch out your outdoor light bulbs to yellow colour light bulbs which may deter certain spiders.
9. Chestnuts
Line your window sills with chestnuts. Chestnuts can be effective at keeping spiders at bay. But bear in mind that chestnuts may attract raccoons, squirrels, and chipmunks!
10. Baking Soda and Diatomaceous Earth
Sprinkle baking soda or diatomaceous earth (found on Amazon.ca) on your window sills, doorways, and in the corners of your porch or deck. This will keep spiders at bay.
11. Use Vinegar
Vinegar is a superior spider repellent.
Homemade White Vinegar Spider Repellent Spray
- 1 cup vinegar
- 2 cups warm water
Place the vinegar and water in a spray bottle and shake well. Spray the mixture on and around window sills, around doorways, and other entry points in your residence. For best results, spray weekly. The smell of vinegar will dissipate once the solution dries. Spray your patio furniture with this solution.
Avoid a Houseful of 8-Legged Roommates
There are more than 40 unique species of spiders in Ontario.
Some species plot attack and detour strategies to capture prey. They have remarkable cognitive powers and eyesight. Some have venomous fangs. They eat their own. They engage in sexual cannibalism. They (can) jump. Their jaws are tipped with fangs. They bite. Sometimes they are hairy. Often, they are scary.
They’re smarter than you think. Spiders have large and complex brains that pretty much occupy nearly all of the front part of the spider’s body.
Spiders rarely bite humans, but you don’t want to tangle with two species of Ontario spiders.
You want to avoid an encounter with the Northern Black Widow spider – found in southern and eastern Ontario. Black widow spider bites are very painful and harmful. Typical hiding spots for Black Widows are sheds, wood piles, crawl spaces, gutter downspouts, basements, attics, and garages.
Brown Recluse spiders are uncommon in Ontario – with rare sightings likely the result of hitchhiking spiders from Southern and Central USA. Their bites are necrotic. Brown Recluse spiders like to hang out in cabinets, closets, kitchen cupboards, under furniture, and in window wells. In the john, they can be found behind the toilet or under the bathroom vanity. Under the furnace in the basement is another favourite haunt.
Once overnight temps start to drop, get ready for increased spider activity inside. Sex organs of male web spinners develop in the fall and they are gung ho to put them to the test. What better place to mate than those warm and cozy places in your house or cottage?
The number of spider eggs per egg sac varies depending on the species but can range from 10 to 1,500 or more. Bold Jumping Spiders, a species of spiders in Ontario, lay 100 to 150 eggs per egg sac. That’s a whole lotta Bold Jumping Spiderlings!
Unless you’re keen on having a houseful of 8-legged roommates, begin your spider prevention methods now!
Kitchener-Waterloo Real Estate Blog Post: September 1, 2024
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