*CAUTION* this post contains pictures of spiders.
We aren’t a spider killing family for the most part. Black widows being the exception as they live on the kids toys and I’m terrified of the kids getting bit.
Now that I am going to be home with the kids full time I wanted an area to allow them to run off steam during the winter. Luckily we have an unfinished basement. Unluckily we never use our unfinished basement, but the spiders love it.
Before oil
I admit I go down there to retrieve and replace Christmas decoration totes, and that’s it. We knew there were spiders but they weren’t bothering us so we didn’t bother them. Now that I’m moving kids toys down there and preparing to keep them active and entertained the spiders have become a problem. A big one. I can’t move anything without at least 6 spiders skittering away. It’s creeping me out, and I’m not easily creeped out. Besides that there are widows down there. A large brown widow bachelor pad to be exact. I’m sure there are black ones down there hiding in crevices. Obviously I’m not comfortable letting the kids play with all these spiders about, so they have to be evicted. This is where Pinterest comes in.
I enjoy Pinterest, I won’t lie. The problem with Pinterest is that you have to sift through the misinformation to find anything of use. The premise of the peppermint oil post I found is that you soak some cotton balls with peppermint essential oil and it repels all the critters you don’t want. Essential oil was purchased, cotton balls were soaked, I smelled like candy canes for days afterward. The spiders, well, they put some garland up and some lights and the bachelors said they really liked having a woman’s touch in their pad. It didn’t work. Basement smells like Christmas though. Bug bomb ahoy!
After oil
Oh and you really don’t have to tell me to get down there and clean these things out of the window wells. I am totally on board with that, so long as dying isn’t a possible end result of the endeavor.