spiders! natural deterrent/remedy?

[sweetfructose]

ok, first let me begin by saying that i know most spiders are harmless. and i also know that they are good because they take care of other creepy crawlies...BUT i am a city girl at heart and they are my phobia. it's not rational, and i've been working on getting better with it for years. with that being said...

this morning as i was going to make some coffee, i open up the coffee filter to find that my lovely DH had left the grounds in the coffee maker. so i throw them out, go to get another filter, and what do i find when i turn around? a large greenish-whitish spider crawling out from under the filter with an egg sack on it's back and trailing a web. : apparently in the few days since the last time we made coffee, it decided the coffee maker would be a nice moist place to set up shop and raise some kids. ugh! i managed to stay calm in from of DD long enough to take her to another room and put her in the swing while i took care of things (i'm really hoping the phobia will skip a generation), but inside was swearing like a sailor.

this is the 5th or 6th one i've seen in the past couple of days - just the other morning i almost walked right into one that was coming down from a single strand of web. my family now lives in a semi suburban town with plenty of plants and so forth outside, so because of that and the increasing temps of spring, i know seeing one every now and then is just the way it's going to be, but i'd love to cut down on the number of them. Any natural remedies to deter them from coming in the house?? i know, that may be unrealistic, but at least something to keep them from living in my appliances?

[HappilyEvrAfter]

:

...because no matter where I live I seem to have a spider magnet imbedded in me.....and beacuse I have a REALLY bad craving for popcorn.

One with an egg sack would have sent me.over.the.edge.

[sbgrace]

I don't know how natural you want but the best way to get rid of spiders are sticky/glue traps. Non-toxic but a headache if a kid or pet gets stuck. (vegetable oil is the solution...did that once) We put them behind furniture and the like along baseboards. A pest person will (if they are honest) admit that even sprays and the like don't get spiders.

[EKSmith]

I remember hearing awhile back to rub down your window sills and door frames with citronella oil to deter annoying insects. I've never tried this, so I don't know if it would work, but it probably couldn't hurt either. I'm thinking of trying it myself once the creepy crawlies get moving up here!

[wendyland]

Originally Posted by sbgrace

I don't know how natural you want but the best way to get rid of spiders are sticky/glue traps. Non-toxic but a headache if a kid or pet gets stuck. (vegetable oil is the solution...did that once) We put them behind furniture and the like along baseboards. A pest person will (if they are honest) admit that even sprays and the like don't get spiders.

We've used the glue traps. It's really creepy to see what sticks to them. Yikes! I don't mind most spiders, but I don't like having Brown Recluses.

I also had a cat lay down on one of the traps. Luckily I was able to cut it off her. She was pretty freaked out.

[prettypixels]

I used to try to catch and release, but then one of those nasties bit my dog and she almost died. It wasn't a brown recluse, this type of spider isn't usually aggressive, but still. With kids, no spiders in the house. So thus began spider attack in my old house in MD which was in the country and had tons of spiders. No mercy. The spiders in my house were hobo spiders. I just got the creepy crawlies googling them. UGH!