For some homeowners, mice just seem to be part of the house. Believe it or not, you can get rid of mice, and you can do it yourself! All it takes is some willpower and elbow grease.
The following lists the steps you need to take to get rid of mice. For removal you can count on, contact Star Pest Control Services or another company near you.
- Eliminate sources of food and water
Mice survive in the home by feeding on whatever they find. This includes the crumbs on your floors, the food in your pantry, and the bits of food left in the sink. Do everything you can to get rid of these sources of food so that you encourage the animals to eat the food you’ll place in traps.
Tidy up the kitchen from top to bottom. Wipe down the insides of your cupboards, pull out your appliances, and vacuum everything up. Mop the floor and implement a thorough cleaning regimen. Do the dishes every night and always wipe down the countertops.
Do you keep bird seed in the garage? Store anything edible in sealed containers or jars. Use lidded garbage cans and take the kitchen garbage out every night.Because mice need water, fix all your leaky faucets and avoid leaving any standing water or dirty dishes out for long. Avoid leaving pet food out overnight.
- Deep clean and reduce clutter
Next comes the hiding spots. Mice nest in walls, drawers, appliances, floor voids, and other quiet, enclosed areas. At night, they come out of their nests and venture out to their food source, taking the same paths every time. Because mice are prey, they prefer to sneak through clutter and hide as much as possible.
Tidy up the house as much as you can so you force mice out of their hiding spots and into their traps. Get rid of all unnecessary clutter, like carboard boxes. Organize your things and give away what you don’t use. Practice some cable management to tidy up the floors. Dust and vacuum everywhere.
Finish by sealing any gaps you find in the house, like a crack in the baseboards or a gap between cupboards. Use caulking or expanding foam.
- Seal entry points
Now to stop mice from getting into the house. Mice are tiny, squishy little animals that can fit through holes narrower than a dime. Grab a flashlight and examine the outer walls of your home for little points of entry. Remember that mice can jump and climb up nearly any surface.
- Doors. Lots of people leave their doors open to let in some air, but this lets mice walk on in. Invest in screen doors and seal any cracks you find in your door frames. Put weatherstripping on the bottom so mice can’t crawl underneath.
- Windows. Seal cracks in your window frames with silicone caulking. Don’t forget to check under bay windows. Patch up torn screens or replace them entirely.
- Vinyl siding.Using a flashlight, check for gaps between your siding panes and seal them with silicone caulking.
- Cable lines. The cable lines that run into your home may be surrounded by a gap that mice can crawl through. Stuff this with steel wool or expanding foam. You can also use a quarter inch mesh.
- Weep vents. The little holes in your brick walls allow the home to ventilate, but they also invite mice and other critters into the home. Close these off with stainless steel weep holes covers from the hardware store.
- Wall vents. Mice can climb into wall vents and chew their way into the house. Purchase some quarter inch, galvanized steel mesh from the hardware store, then use it to cover your vents. Shape the mesh to fit over the vents, then screw it into the wall.
- Foundation gaps. Look for little cracks in your foundation and seal them with epoxy or mortar. Don’t forget to check under the deck for gaps in the foundation, where you may not have noticed any cracks before.
- Set traps – lots of them
Once you are finished excluding and tidying up the home, set some traps. You can use snap traps, live traps, or electronic traps. Glue traps are also available, but they are extremely cruel. Purchase the kind of traps you want, and place them along the walls of the home, in rooms where you suspect to have some mouse activity.
Mice usually come in large numbers, so it’s important that you set a lot of traps. Catching only the occasional mouse is not enough to decrease the population. Place them in cupboards, in closets, and behind appliances. Bait them with a very small amount of food, such as a pea-sized bit of peanut butter, cheese, or gum drop.
Check your traps every single day. When you catch a dead mouse, spray it with disinfectant, wait 10 minutes, then throw the animal out in a plastic bag. Clean the trap thoroughly before using it again. If using live traps, take the animals out into the backyard and do not handle them.
- Tidy up the yard
The last part of the removal process is to tidy up the yard. Like the inside of the house, you want to remove hiding spots and sources of food. This will keep mice away from the yard and away from the house.
So, get rid of the bird feeder or start feeding the birds sparingly. Cover your fruits and vegetables with mesh and use lidded garbage cans for collection day. Pick up fallen fruit and don’t let anything rot on the ground. Rake the leaves in the fall and move things away from the walls of the home, such as firewood. Clean up your window wells, trim up the hedges, and trim up the vines. The neater the yard, the better.
