If you don’t like having spiders in your home, you aren’t alone. But if you take proactive prevention measures in your home, you won’t have to deal with spiders very often. You may have landed here because you Google’d something like, “Spider prevention in home”. After reading this article you’ll see it is a simple process, and with a bit of effort, you’ll have great results that will make you more comfortable in your home.
Steps for Spider Prevention in Your Home
Step 1: Remove Any Spiders Currently in Your Home
If you want to prevent spiders in your home, take some time to go through each room in your house looking for spiders and removing them by either carrying them away from your home or sucking them up in your vacuum.
Even if you don’t have a lot of spiders in your home, looking for spiders in your home will help you learn where spiders like to hide, where they like to enter from, or even why they’re coming into your home. For good spider prevention in your home, you need to know where the spiders are and why they’re coming inside. That information will help you in your other efforts to prevent and eliminate spiders from your home.
Step 2: Get Rid of Insects the Spiders Want to Eat
Spiders don’t like humans, so why do they come inside our houses? Well, one of the top reasons spiders come inside your home is because they are attracted to the insects that are living in your home. The insects are their food source, and if they can get easy access to food in your home, they’re willing to ignore the fact that you live there too.
But if you don’t want spiders as your new roommates, you need to get rid of the insects the spiders want to eat. When you go through your home looking for spiders, you should be able to see if the areas the spiders are in also have other insects nearby.
Go through your home and clean up any living or dead insects. Removing the insects will take away the spiders’ main reason for living in your home. Without a plentiful food source, the spiders will move on to better feeding grounds.
Step 3: Close Off Spider Entryways Into Your Home
Of course, it’s impossible to keep insects out of your home 100% of the time, so you’ll want to take other measures to prevent spiders from coming into your home. One of the best ways to do this is by closing off their entries into your home.
Spiders often enter your home through small cracks or gaps in your house. Try placing weather stripping in doorways with gaps. If your windows have gaps, you could put a new seal on them or caulk them. You’ll also want to caulk any cracks in your foundation or walls that could be letting spiders inside.
It’s also a good idea to install window screens if you don’t already have them and to make an extra effort to keep doors and windows closed when possible so the spiders and insects don’t decide to come in through the most obvious entry.
Step 4: Hire Professional Pest Control
Many people only think about pest control when they have a major pest problem. However, pest control can be useful for spider prevention in the home as much as for spider eradication. Professional pest control is a good option for spider prevention because it requires less effort and less risk on your part.
Professional pest control will also be able to recommend the best treatment options for spider prevention in your home, which is much more convenient than trying to figure that out yourself at your local home improvement store. Instead, you’ll have someone who knows what they’re doing take care of the problem for you in the best way possible.
Step 5: Add Some DIY Pest Controls for Extra Prevention
Professional pest control will do a lot to prevent spiders in your home. However, it never hurts to take some extra prevention measures on top of the pest treatments. Some of the best DIY methods for spider prevention in the home include:
- Growing houseplants that repel spiders. Did you know that there are some plants that naturally repel spiders? Peppermint, rosemary, and basil are some good plants to start with, and as a bonus, you’ll have fresh herbs to incorporate into your cooking. It’s best to place these plants near the areas that are frequented by spiders.
- Making your own spider repellent. If there are areas in your home that spiders really like to hang out in, you might want to try spraying a homemade spider repellent. Don’t worry, they don’t have dangerous chemicals. A mixture as simple as peppermint oil, water, and dish soap could do it.
- Rub citrus around your home. Spiders do not like the smell of citrus, and that makes citrusyour new best friend. Take the peels of your lemons and oranges and rub them on entry points in your home to keep spiders out.
Step 6: Maintain a Clean Home
After you’ve taken these spider prevention measures in your home, the best thing you can do is keep your home as clean as possible. When you keep your home very clean, spiders are less likely to frequent your home because they know they’ll be disturbed. Plus, when you’re cleaning up insects regularly, the spiders shouldn’t have much food source available to them in your home.
The Reality of Spider Prevention in Your Home
While we’d all like to have our homes 100% free of spiders for the rest of our lives, the fact is that spiders will show up in our homes once in a while even after doing everything we can to prevent them from coming in.
But doing our best to prevent spiders from entering and living in your home will do a lot to minimize your path crossing with spiders. These measures will also help prevent a full-out infestation of spiders from growing in your home. An occasional spider can easily be dealt with, but an infestation can be a major problem. So even though spiders can’t be completely removed from your home, you’ll be glad you took the time to prevent them from coming into your home as much as possible.
