The Art of Balanced Living

Natural Spider Repellent

Those of you who read my personal blog know that we’ve been having a bit of a spider problem in our new place. Spiders can be our friends. They kill other annoying insects. In normal situations a few stray spiders around the house wouldn’t bother me. When you start finding large spiders in your bed and your catching an average of four a day wondering around your house, something needs to be done.

I’ve been told that there are no poisonous spiders in England. Whether or not they’re poisonous, finding a spider in your underwear is never pleasant. So we’ve decided that something had to be done. I did some research and found this recipe for repelling spiders.

Ingredients

1 quart water
5 tablespoons natural liquid soap
1 ounce neem oil
a few drops of levander oil or tea tree oil

Mix these ingredients together in a spray bottle and spray around the area the spiders are getting in. Apparently spiders have taste buds on there legs and they hate this combination of ingredients.

If you’re anything like me you’re thinking, “Where the heck do I get neem oil?”

In theory, your local health food store should have neem oil. Mine didn’t. So I bought some natural bug spray that contained mostly neem oil. I skipped the natural soap and mixed a few drops of lavender oil and tea tree oil directly into the bug spray container and started spraying. The spiders were coming in the vent in my stepson’s room.

It worked. We haven’t seen any spiders since. Today, I read that spiders don’t like anything lemon or lavender scented. My advice is to take all the information you find out about spiders dislikes and experiment. That’s what I did.

If you only have a couple of spiders in your house and they’re not deadly, you should probably just leave them alone. If you’d rather not leave them alone you should consider giving them names and making friends with them.

Photo by aussiegall.