We lived in a wooden house with more gaps than even the dullest spider would ever need to gain entry. Needless to say we had to deal with quite a few. I wish I'd thought to look up a few of these natural pest repellent recipes then.
**Spiders don't like Peppermint apparently- so grow some on your window sills or by the door if you have the right amount of sunlight, or you can do what we did and spray the outside and inside of your window and door frames with Peppermint essential oil.
I used about 50 drops in about 100ml of water. It isn't water soluble so you'll need to shake the bottle often as you spray. You will be left with a delightfully minty fresh and (hopefully) spider-free home.
** For a natural Mosquito repellent, blend cinnamon, clove, geranium, peppermint, and lemongrass essential oils. OR, try cintronella and lemongrass oils.
** Apparently Peppermint Oil is also a Mouse and Rat deterrent, but you need to re-spray fairly frequently, every 3 days or so. Blocking all gaps and keeping food secured in glass containers is probably a better bet though. You might consider growing peppermint near your compost and chicken pens though, mice and rats might not move in quite so readily.
Now that we live in beautiful Gippsland hills, Snakes are now also a concern. We have used 'Snake Chasers'- available at Diggers- which are plastic stakes you stick in the ground to emit a pulse every 30 seconds to deter snakes. These are about $35 each (and then you need about $15 worth of batteries to power them but they should last a year) and cover an area of about 300 metres square.
In addition a neighbour forwarded me a natural snake repellent recipe recently, so I'm going to give this a go too...can't be too careful.
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