10 Ways To Get Rid Of Mice

If you spot mice in your home, you need to get rid of them immediately before they get established inside. How to get rid of mice is not for the faint of heart, however. Getting rid of mice requires making changes to your home and a willingness to deter and harm rodents.

In this article, we’ll teach you how to get rid of mice in the house as well as a few tricks for how to keep mice out of your home once you’ve killed them.

10 Methods For How To Get Rid Of Mice

Here are some effective ways to keep mice out of your house.

Standard Mousetraps

Standard mousetraps are spring-loaded to smash the backs of rodents who try to access the tasty bait placed at the end of the trap. Conventional mousetraps are widely used because they’re very useful.

Standard mousetraps are also very inexpensive. You can re-use the same mousetrap over and over again. Bait can be as simple as a piece of cheese or peanut butter, so you’ll always have something on hand.

However, standard mousetraps leave a mess when they kill a mouse. They also may be inhumane because they may not kill some mice instantly, causing them considerable pain in the aftermath.

Standard mousetraps are also not effective at how to keep mice out of your house because they require using smelly bait, which will actively attract them to the area. Many people also find standard mousetraps to be visually unappealing.

Live-Capture Traps

Live-capture traps are the most common alternative to a spring-loaded killing mousetrap.

Live-capture traps have two varieties: enclosure traps, and sticky mat traps.

Sticky mat traps are coated with glue so that mice can’t walk away after they take the bait. Sticky mat traps are inhumane, however, so you probably shouldn’t use them. It’s challenging to extricate mice from sticky traps, however.

Enclosure traps prevent mice from leaving by closing a door behind them once they take the bait. Most enclosure traps are transparent so that you will be able to view your prisoner and confirm that they are incapable of escaping.

Enclosure traps are probably the most ethical way to dispose of mice, but keep in mind that you will need to deliver your captive mouse very far from your home if you want them to stay out.

Enclosure traps are also burdensome because mice may defecate or urinate inside of the trap. Likewise, mice trapped inside may make noise when they try to burrow out of the trap.

Similarly, if you want enclosure traps to be ethical, you have to check on them once per day to make sure that you don’t have a prisoner who is wasting away.

Poison Traps

Poison traps are a cleaner way of killing mice. Poisoned bait pellets will kill mice in a couple of hours after the pellets are consumed. You will need to clean up the dead mice before they start to rot.

Unfortunately, when mice are poisoned, they may eventually die somewhere that is not easy for you to reach. This often leads to situations in which a mouse dies inside of a wall and starts to stink while it is rotting.

For many people, this makes poison traps highly undesirable to use in the home. Furthermore, for outdoor use, poison traps are likely to kill other animals, which are not the target of your ire.

You can also make mouse poisons from scratch if you don’t want to purchase a commercial product.

You should be aware that anything which will poison mice will also be poisonous to your pets and children. This means that you will need to deploy your poison traps in areas that are inaccessible for the other members of your family.

Pressurized Air Traps

Pressurized air traps are safe and effective for killing mice. When a mouse tries to access the bait from a pressurized air trap, the trap blasts their skull with a puff of air at extreme pressure.

The strength of this puff of air is akin to a shockwave from a bomb blast, and it will kill mice and other rodents instantly. Unlike a bomb blast, pressurized air traps are quiet, so the only thing you’ll hear is a small puff of air that’s about as loud as snapping your fingers.

However, pressurized air traps need to be reloaded with new canisters of pressurized air, unlike more straightforward kill traps. You can expect to get about 150 trap activations from a single cartridge of air.

Some pressurized air traps are durable and straightforward enough to use in outdoor areas. If you have a morbid curiosity, you can also purchase pressurized air traps that track the number of mice that they have killed.

Be aware that pressurized air traps are hazardous for pets and children who may try to stick their noses inside of the trap to get the bait. While it won’t kill them, it may cause them to be seriously harmed.

Thankfully, most pressurized air traps have systems in place to make sure that pets can’t get close to the dangerous area.

Zap Traps

Zap traps are similar to pressurized air traps in that they facilitate the instantaneous killing of mice. Rather than using a blast of pressurized air, zap traps use electricity to kill the mouse.

When the mouse steps on the trap’s trigger, their paw completes a circuit with the electrode, which is situated above the rodent’s head within the trap. The current flows directly through the mouse’s head, frying its brain instantly, and then jumps to the top electrode.

Zap traps kill mice instantly, so they are somewhat ethical in comparison to other methods.

Zap traps are powerful, but they face reliability problems because of their electrical components, meaning that you can’t deploy them outside your house. Rain and moisture also may make zap traps less effective.

Zap traps can operate via a battery or by being plugged into your house’s power supply. You won’t need to worry about a high electrical bill. The total power draw of a zap trap is very low in comparison to appliances like your microwave or a ceiling fan.

Get a Cat

Cats are natural and effective anti-mouse predators. Cats also tend to urinate in their litterbox, leaving behind scents which mice will find frightening.

Similarly, the smell of cat dander may dissuade mice from entering your home. If mice do enter your home, your cat may be willing to eat them or at least kill them.

As you may know, not all cats are equally adept at killing mice, however. If you double up on cats, there’s a better chance that you’ll have at least one cat who will eat mice.

Clean Up The Crumbs

Mice love to snack on crumbs from human food. If you keep a clean household, there won’t be as many reasons for mice to scavenge your leftovers. The same goes for pet food.

Trash is also a significant mouse attractant. If mice smell food sitting inside of a trash bag, they will likely burrow into it to try to get at the nutrients inside. Secure your trash inside of a durable container so that mice can’t get inside.

Setup Chemical Repellents

Mice have a keen sense of smell, and they listen to their intuitions about the presence of predators. This means that if you spray chemical repellents with odors of predators, the mice will be dissuaded from coming near.

Cat urine, fox urine, and capsaicin are all effective chemical repellents for mice.

Seal The Cracks

Mice love to live inside of walls, but they can only navigate your home when there are cracks in the walls. Seal these cracks to prevent mice from traveling freely into areas where they might find food, like your kitchen.

For how to keep mice out of your house, sealing the cracks is the most important thing you can do. If you seal all of the cracks in your home, mice may become trapped in the walls and be forced to leave to the outside or face starvation.

Deploy Sonic Deterrents

Mice can hear exceptionally well. If you deploy sonic deterrents which emit ultrasonic noises, mice will find it unpleasant and prefer not to tread near your house.

How to get rid of mice is more complicated than deploying sonic deterrents, however. If mice are already established in your house, they will likely find the presence of food and a safe habitat to be compelling enough to tolerate a sonic deterrent system.

What’s The Best Way To Get Rid Of Mice?

Using a combination of the methods discussed above is the best way to get rid of mice.

You should seal the cracks in your home, clean up crumbs and trash on the floor, set up traps of your selection, and then set up deterrents once you have confirmed that there aren’t any mice running rampant.

The most important thing to remember while getting rid of mice is that consistency is vital. Mice will rapidly re-establish themselves inside your home if you stop trying to keep them out actively. If all else fails, contacting a professional pest control company can effectively eliminate mice from taking up residence in your home.