[bob1029]

This is why I don't mind the spiders so much.

They do a really good job of vacuuming up the smaller insects around my home. You can tell how well they're working by the density of crap in their webs. I go out of my way to not harm them if possible. I used to spray for everything but I think that just makes things worse in the long run.

[TacticalCoder]

I always let the spiders in the house alone. I know they kill mosquitoes and the like.

But nonetheless around last september we had bedbugs in our main bedroom (France, but not Paris : rural south east of France). I couldn't find any but they were obviously sucking our blood at night: these weren't mosquitoes bites.

Thankfully that bedroom is "zen": one huge bed and that's it. So we bought all the chemicals needed to kill the bedbugs (yup, sorry for the planet about these chemicals but you cannot live with bedbugs) and I quickly repainted the entire room, figuring out that bedbugs probably wouldn't like it much to get both the anti-bedbugs chemicals plus brand new painted walls.

Chemicals, painting the whole room, washing the sheets, vaccuum cleaning. Rinse and repeat for two to three days.

No problem since.

So you can get rid of these little mofos but spiders alone aren't sufficient.

[xtiansimon]

> “So we bought all the chemicals needed to kill the bedbugs (yup, sorry for the planet about these chemicals but you cannot live with bedbugs).”

No need to use chemicals. Get a mattress bag (made special for bed bugs) and buy a hand steamer. Learn where they like to hide, and blast em with steam.

[xtiansimon]

Oh. I just remembered. A friend of mine lives in an SRO. The owner of the property manages these pests with a room heater. They bake the room for something like 12 hours and supposedly this mitigates the problem.

As I mentioned here before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35699400), I prefer my "killing field" method, "The bugs infest your bed, reproduce, and spread out. To get rid of them you do the reverse—kill them on the bed with steam. Wait a day or two for the commuters to repopulate the bedding, repeat."

[tamimio]

No need for chemicals, like other said, use steam, and also use diatomaceous earth (1) to kill them naturally.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth

[beej71]

And from my reading and experience, diatomaceous earth is completely effective, unlike many chemicals.

[KRAKRISMOTT]

Get the variety that's statically charged, those are really deadly. Insect asbestos.

[thebruce87m]

Bought this stuff for a flea infestation but couldn’t bring myself to use it. Reminded me too much of asbestos.

[tamimio]

Exactly this why I keep them around as long as they don’t invade my personal space, also house centipede, scary looking, but harmless to humans, deadly for small insects.

[cf141q5325]

In case anyone is afraid of spiders, confrontation therapy does wonders. Doesnt have to be drastic, letting one set up a net in a visible area already does wonders.