Spiders - how come so many all of a sudden?

Spiders - seen much more coming into the house. A particular species - it's about 0.5 cm across less and all, and are black. But they're persistant wee buggers, they seem to lurk about and they kind of 'square up to you' when you try to catch them. And they come in and march across to the bin in the kitchen (we empty it every second day or so) or go straight for the cat food bowl and lurk about there, so they aren't like 'nice' spiders that like to spin cobwebs and catch flies, they is a bit sinister. Do you know what they are and how to deter them?