Although often met with fear and disgust, small house spiders have an enormous role to play in the cleanliness of our homes and our overall ecosystem.
Despite Australia’s last fatal spider bite being recorded all the way back in 1979, an estimated 5% of the population still have a crippling fear of these types of creepy crawlies. While it’s not easy being arachnophobic in a country that’s home to around four thousand species of spiders, it’s unfortunate that all have been tarred with the same dangerous brush.
In fact, small house spiders – or the relatively harmless variety often found in residential homes – are often chronically misunderstood. While our first instinct is often to give them a swat with the nearest shoe, these creatures are anything but freeloaders, and can make positive contributions to home environments when permitted.
Three Reasons Not To Kill Small House Spiders
For many, it’s natural to fear spiders. They have lots of legs, sometimes lots of hair, and some even have the capacity to store venom – even though their fangs are usually too small to pierce our skin.
Like it or not, small house spiders are an important part of nature and our indoor ecosystem. In addition to being fellow organisms in their own right, these types of arachnids are usually secretive, and almost all you meet are neither aggressive nor dangerous.
Despite popular belief, spiders are not out to get you and actually prefer to avoid humans. If you can resist the urge to dispose of them with the nearest jar or shoe, allowing small house spiders to remain in residence may actually come with a range of benefits.
Natural Pest Control – Although their tiny webs don’t often do a lot for your home’s visuals, small house spiders like to feast on pesky insects, like roaches, aphids, moths, and earwigs, which help keep their population in check. On a larger scale, they also help to alleviate the spread of diseases and the destruction of our farmland crops. Without them, our food supply chain would be in serious trouble.
Manageable Population – If you’re afraid of being overrun by small house spiders, the good news is that they’ll actually manage their own residency levels. As gruesome as it sounds, spiders often kill their own kind. When small house spiders come into contact with one another, a gladiator-like competition for dominance frequently unfolds – and the winner eats the loser. This way, there’s never an unmanageable number of spiders present in your home.
Curb Disease Spread – Aside from mosquitos, did you know that fleas, flies and cockroaches have the capacity to spread a number of diseases to humans? If one flea had the capacity to start the Bubonic Plague, managing their numbers is a must. Thankfully, small house spiders feast on these types of unwelcome guests, and reduce the need for any chemical based insect control measures in residential homes.
Fundamentally, small house spiders reduce the need for insecticides in our domestic environments. If you can get past their unfortunate looks, letting a handful share your home with you may have a wide range of benefits, and present the opportunity for a mutually beneficial working relationship.
It’s also worth remembering that a healthy lifestyle is not just about how we look after our physical bodies, but how we maintain our living environments as well. Once you’ve managed to tackle unwelcome insects without resorting to chemicals, it makes sense to keep your home sparkling clean in the same manner in the long term.
Ditch The Chemicals And Stay Clean With Goodwings
We all know that good help can be hard to find, particularly when it comes to finding a reliable housekeeper that you can trust. Offering four to six hour cleaning packages, just a handful of the services on offer with the Cleaning Angels at Goodwings include bed linen changes, washing, and topping up everyday household goods like washing powder, shampoos, toilet paper and much more.
Given the fact that eco-friendly cleaning agents have been demonstrated to be just as effective at tackling various chores as traditional cleaning products, the weekly or fortnightly packages on offer through Goodwings enable Queenslanders to continue on with a healthy lifestyle without sacrificing the cleanliness of their homes.
To find out more about the services on offer with us at Goodwings, get in touch to discuss how we can provide your household with world class cleaning solutions.
