Making Your Home a No-Go Area for Mice

Is your home unwittingly providing the local mouse population with food and shelter? You wouldn’t intend that to be the case, but it’s easier than you think to make your home welcoming for them.

Mice can get through unbelievably-small gaps and crevices. Here’s the rule of thumb – if you can poke a biro into a hole, a mouse can get through that hole, too. Mice tend only to hang around if they know there is food around, so the best place to start looking for an accidental open-door policy is in your kitchen. Here are some points to note:

• Do you have gaps underneath any skirting boards?
• Are there any holes around pipework?
• Are there any holes inside kitchen cupboards, particularly inside built-in cupboards?

While you are doing all this, make a list of areas that need filling in. You can use a mix of steel wool to plug the gap, and sealant to fill it so they cannot push or bite their way through. Also, keep an eye out for any droppings or grease marks, which would indicate a mouse has already found its way inside.

Removing (or at least preserving) food stores

We all store food in our kitchen cupboards, but if you have a mouse problem (or you want to make sure you don’t get one in future), invest in some tins or containers with strong lids. You can store your food in these instead of keeping it in cardboard packets or bags, which can both be easily accessed by a mouse. All it needs to do is to chew through it and hey presto, there’s dinner.

This is a good time to have a spring clean, too, whatever time of year it is. Take everything out of the cupboards, clean the shelves with antibacterial cleaner and leave to dry before putting everything back in. It’s also a great way to check everything, fill and seal holes as mentioned above, and to watch for droppings.

And if you do find you have a problem and you do all the above and they are still getting in, you can always call a pest control expert to help you. Sometimes, it takes a professional to locate the mice, and to find the best way to combat them and prevent them coming into a property. They’ll give you advice on making sure you’re not bothered by them again, too.