Storage Tips to Keep Mice Off Your Stuff

Once pest mice get into your stuff, terrible and horrible things can happen. Inside your closet, they can rip open your underwear, your socks and even your favorite shirt! Inside the pantry, they can nibble through the boxes containing your precious food items. In your garage, they can mess up with the tools that you have just neatly arranged. And in your car, they can ruin your expensive seat covers and floor mat. But these things could have been avoided if you have properly kept you items. Protecting your stuff from mice is actually very simple to do and believe me, you will regret it when you do not spend enough time to read this article and learn how you can control mice by yourself. Here are my top 10 tips:

1. If you are moving a piece of furniture into storage (maybe in the attic, basement, garage or a separate storage room), clean it attentively. That means that you need to thoroughly vacuum the surface of the furniture to remove every dust that clings into it. Clean out all the stains and the little pieces of debris that are stuck in the crevices and in the cracks of the furniture. You'll never know, but those little pieces of debris might only attack mice to jump into your furniture and start to nibble the cracks to get those tiny pieces one by one. If you want to keep you furniture safe, then spend enough time to clean it. Once it is clean, you can choose to cover it with fabric or with plastic covers to keep the dust off it and to discourage mice to come near it.

2. For the same reason as above, clean all your appliances no matter how big or how small. The little bread crumbs that are left in your toaster's tray might invite mice to come into your kitchen more often and eventually discover that they are more stuff to eat there than just plain bread crumbs. You don't want that to happen, do you? So, the best thing that you can do is to wipe your appliances clean until all the traces of food are gone. Apart from mice, ants, bugs and other pests are attracted to left-over food, so you better be serious about this one.

3. For your clothes, especially those that you no longer use and store in boxes, it is highly advisable for you to put moth balls (naphthalene balls) inside the box too. The moth balls produce a very strong smell that mice find detestable. Moreover, when mice nibble the moth balls, they will surely die too, that's enough discouragement for them not to. The good thing about moth balls is that these balls do not stain the contents of the box. They will just "melt" away slowly, thus, if you are observant enough, you will notice that the moth balls are getting smaller and smaller over time. The reason behind this is that the smell that it produces is actually from its portion that "melts" and transform into gas. If you do not like the smell of moth balls, you can also try cedar-scented mouse-repelling sachets and block. These products are more expensive that they smell fragrant, thus your garments will not get that naphtalene-ish smell, and instead, they will smell like cedar which is very appealing to the human senses. An entire sachet of cedar-scented repellents can last for up to four months, that's enough if you are only storing your items for a while, say, you are in a vacation or a business trip. If you plan to store them a little bit longer, just change the sachet after four months.

4. Except if you are really an anti-pesticide advocate, feel free to use pesticides. You can use contained insecticides if you are concerned about your pets and of other factors. You can use these to add an extra security system to your storage, so that before they even reach your storage boxes, they are already dead. For mice, you can use popular pesticide products like Racumin which kills mice on the spot. On-the-spot killing is important because if the mice get to move even for a while after they have eaten the poison, they might end up inside your storage and die there. Dead mice like other dead animals can produce some really nasty smell.

5. If you are using mouse traps to improve the security of your storage system, do not use cheese as bait, instead, use peanut butter. It is a common misconception that mice like to eat cheese (blame that to Tom and Jerry). Mice prefer sweeter stuff and you use peanut butter because apart from being sweet, it is also very sticky. By being sticky, the mouse has to lick it off the trap, increasing the possibility of the trap to snap and catch the mouse.

6. Herbs are also effective deterrents. You can put herbs in the corners of your house to discourage mice from coming-in in the first place. You can use catnip (the "cat" part of the name of this herb and the natural ability of cats to scare mice is a coincidence), lavender, sage and mint to repel mice. Although these herbs may not be as effective as the chemical-based repellents, still they are good options for you to try. Mice are said to be extremely allergic to mint so you might want to give mint a try.

7. If you must keep food in containers, prefer to use containers that mice cannot penetrate with their extremely sharp teeth. You can use glass containers with screw lids or plastic containers with snap lips. The rationale here is simple, if mice will not get into your food, they will starve to death inside your house if they will stay. As a normal response, the mice will leave your house and find another place where they can actually find food to eat.

8. Some scented candles actually produce smell that mice are attracted to. Avoid storing candles during warm weathers as they can melt and invite mice to come close.