Every fall, somebody on our crew picks up a soggy cardboard box during a garage cleanout in Boise and finds a black widow sitting right where their fingers were about to go. Nobody screams. It just happens a lot around here.

If you're about to clear out your own garage, think about what lives in the back corners before you start pulling stuff out. Most garages in the Treasure Valley have at least a few spiders. Plenty have mice too, especially once the nights start cooling off.

So should you be worried? A little. Mostly you just need to be smart about how you dig in, so nobody gets bitten or breathes in something nasty.

What's actually living in your garage

Pests love garages. They're dark, nobody heats or cools them, and they're full of stuff that hasn't moved in three years.

Black widows are the big one around here. Our hot, dry summers push them toward shade, and they like quiet spots low to the ground. A bite usually isn't life-threatening for a healthy adult, but it hurts a lot, so call your doctor or Poison Control if you get one.

Mice start moving into garages around September and October. If you live on the edge of town in Meridian, Nampa, or Kuna, where farm fields keep turning into subdivisions, you'll probably see more of them. They go after anything soft or edible: bird seed, dog food, old blankets, cardboard.

Wasps and yellow jackets build nests along the garage door track, inside old lawn equipment, and under shelves. Yellow jackets are at their worst in late summer, when colonies are biggest and natural food is running low.

What you'll find	Where it hides	What to do
Black widows	Under boxes on the floor, inside gloves and boots, behind stuff leaned on walls	Wear gloves and tip things away from you before grabbing
Mouse droppings and nests	Bottom of box stacks, pet food bags, old cushions	Soak it with disinfectant first and never sweep it dry
Wasp or yellow jacket nests	Door tracks, eaves, inside mowers and grills	Leave it alone and get it treated before you clean
Chewed insulation or fabric	Behind shelving, in holiday decor bins	Bag it and toss it

Garage cleanout safety starts with gloves

You don't need a hazmat suit. You do need to quit grabbing things bare-handed.

Thick leather or nitrile gloves take care of most of the spider risk. Add closed-toe shoes, long sleeves, and an N95 mask if you've seen any sign of mice. That's around $20 at the hardware store, and the whole job feels a lot less creepy once you've got it on.

Before you pick something up, tip it toward the wall and away from you. Look before you reach. Sounds obvious, but nearly all of our close calls came from someone sliding a hand under a box without looking.

Shake out gloves, boots, and rolled-up tarps before you put them on or unroll them. Spiders love hiding in those.

Mouse droppings: whatever you do, don't sweep

This is the part people get wrong most often.

House mice are the usual garage visitors, but deer mice are common all over Idaho, and deer mice can carry hantavirus. You get it by breathing in dust from dried droppings and urine. Sweeping, vacuuming, or shaking out a box with a nest in it throws that dust right into the air.

You can't really tell whose droppings are whose, so treat them all the same. Here's the CDC's cleanup method:

Open the garage door and let the space air out for at least 30 minutes
Spray droppings and nest material with a bleach solution (about 1 part bleach to 10 parts water) until it's soaked
Let it sit for 5 minutes
Wipe it up with paper towels, bag it, and toss it in your regular trash

Overkill for a few droppings? Not really. It's about 10 minutes of work, and then you just wipe down the floor, spray your gloves before taking them off, and wash your hands.

Tip: If mice got into a box, don't dig through it. Spray the outside, seal the whole thing in a contractor bag, and let it go. Nothing in a box of chewed paper and droppings is worth the risk, and places like Idaho Youth Ranch can't take soiled stuff anyway.

When a wasp nest changes the plan

Deal with wasps before anyone starts hauling, whether that's you or our garage cleanout crew. Yes, we'd love the job, but honestly, we'd rather that nest be gone before any of us shows up.

A paper wasp nest the size of a golf ball isn't a big deal. A yellow jacket nest inside an old mower or a wall is a different story. Start moving things around and they come out angry, and you won't get stung just once.

You can spray a small nest yourself in the evening, when the wasps are home and sluggish, then give it a day. For anything bigger, or anything tucked inside a wall, call pest control. A one-time wasp treatment around Boise usually runs $100 to $250.

Heavy mouse activity works the same way. If there are droppings everywhere, set traps or get the garage treated about a week before the cleanout. Otherwise the mice just move into whatever you decide to keep.

Where everything goes after a garage cleanout

Once the bugs and mice are handled, the rest is a normal cleanout. The one exception is old bait stations, bug spray cans, and rodent poison. Those count as household hazardous waste, and we cover them in our post on paint, gas, and chemicals in your garage.

Clean scrap metal like old bike frames and broken tools can go to Western Recycling. Anything in good shape that stayed clean and dry can go to Idaho Youth Ranch. The chewed-up, stained, cobwebby stuff heads to Hidden Hollow, the Ada County landfill.

While the garage is empty, seal the gap under the door and put pet food and bird seed in bins with lids. Then get stuff up off the floor and onto shelves, which by itself cuts way down on spiders.

If you want help with the sorting part, here's how to tackle a garage cleanout without losing your weekend.

Bottom line: Most garages have a few spiders and maybe a mouse or two. That's not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to wear gloves, keep the broom away from droppings, and deal with wasp nests before you start.

If you'd rather not reach into those back corners yourself, that's pretty much what we do all day. We do garage cleanouts all over Boise, Meridian, Nampa, and the rest of the Treasure Valley. Call (208) 593-2877 whenever you're ready, even if you just want a rough idea of what it'd take.