The last thing you want to see when you turn on the light in the bathroom late at night is a spider in the middle of the floor. Even worse, it can make your skin crawl to watch one scurry across the bedroom floor and hide under a dresser before you can get to it. If there’s one spider, that usually means there are more. While spiders kill other pests in your home, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want them anywhere near you. That’s why you should never kill a spider. There’s an easy solution to repel spiders in the areas of your home where you don’t want them: hedge apples. The natural chemicals in this funky-looking fruit of the Osage orange tree are believed to repel spiders. When using hedge apples as a spider repellent, just make sure they’re placed where pets and children can’t get at them. Simply place a few hedge apples in areas where you want spiders to vacate — dark corners of your unfinished basement, in the attic, or in your shed — and watch creepy crawlers like spiders, roaches, mosquitos and house flies head for the hills.
