How to Get Rid of Mice
Learn how to get rid of mice in your home with traps, exclusion, and prevention. Covers signs of mice, trap placement, and sealing entry points for good.
We heard the scratching at 2 AM and convinced ourselves it was the house settling. It was not the house settling. A week later we found droppings in the kitchen drawer where we keep the spatulas. That was the wake-up call.
Mice are one of those problems that feel overwhelming because they are invisible most of the time. You hear them, you find evidence of them, but you rarely see them during the day. The good news is that getting rid of mice is straightforward once you understand how they think. They follow the same routes every night, eat the same food sources, and enter through the same gaps.
This guide covers identifying the problem, setting traps correctly (most people get this wrong), sealing entry points, and making your home permanently unattractive to rodents. A typical mouse problem can be resolved in one to two weeks with consistent effort.
Snap traps are the most effective option for most situations. Buy at least six. Peanut butter works as bait (better than cheese, despite what cartoons taught us). A flashlight for inspecting dark areas. Steel wool and caulk for sealing entry points. Rubber gloves for handling traps and cleaning droppings. A disinfectant spray for cleaning contaminated areas.
Confirm you have mice and not rats
Mouse droppings are small, about the size of a grain of rice, and dark brown or black. Rat droppings are significantly larger, about the size of a raisin. This distinction matters because rats require different trap sizes and strategies. Check behind the stove, under the sink, in pantry corners, along baseboards, and inside drawers. Also look for gnaw marks on food packaging, shredded paper or fabric (nesting material), and greasy rub marks along walls. Mice leave an oily residue from their fur as they travel along the same paths repeatedly.
Good to know: Sprinkle a thin layer of flour or baby powder along a baseboard where you suspect activity. Check it in the morning for tiny footprints. This confirms the travel route and tells you exactly where to place traps.
Set snap traps along travel routes
Place snap traps perpendicular to the wall with the trigger end touching the baseboard. Mice run along walls, not through open spaces. They will encounter the trigger naturally as they follow their usual path. Use peanut butter as bait. Apply a pea-sized amount to the trigger plate and press it into the grooves so the mouse has to work at it rather than licking it off without triggering the trap. Set at least six traps. Two traps is not enough for most infestations. Place them every six to eight feet along walls where you found droppings or activity.
Check and reset traps daily
Check every trap each morning. Remove caught mice using rubber gloves and dispose of them in a sealed plastic bag in the outdoor trash. Re-bait and reset the trap in the same spot. If a trap has not caught anything after three days, move it to a different location along the same wall. Mice are curious but also cautious, and sometimes they avoid a trap for a few days before investigating it. Keep trapping for at least a week after the last catch to make sure you got them all. A single pair of mice can produce five to six babies every three weeks.
Heads up: Never touch a dead mouse or droppings with bare hands. Mice can carry hantavirus, salmonella, and other pathogens. Wear rubber gloves, spray droppings with disinfectant before sweeping them up, and wash your hands thoroughly afterward. Do not vacuum or sweep dry droppings as this can aerosolize particles.
Seal every entry point
This is the most important step. Walk the perimeter of your home, inside and out, looking for gaps larger than a quarter inch. Check where pipes enter walls, around dryer vents, along the foundation, at door sweeps, and around window frames. Stuff steel wool into the gap first (mice cannot chew through it), then seal over it with caulk or expanding foam. For larger gaps around pipes, use hardware cloth (wire mesh) secured with screws. Pay special attention to the garage, laundry room, and areas where utility lines enter the house. These are the most common entry points.
Remove food sources and nesting material
Store all dry goods (cereal, rice, pasta, flour, pet food) in airtight hard-sided containers. Mice can chew through cardboard and thin plastic bags. Take out trash daily and use a trash can with a tight-fitting lid. Clean up crumbs and spills immediately, especially behind and under appliances. Remove clutter from the garage, attic, and basement. Mice love nesting in cardboard boxes, old newspapers, and fabric piles. Replace cardboard storage boxes with plastic bins with lids. The less food and shelter available, the less attractive your home is to rodents.
Monitor and prevent long term
After the traps stop catching and you have sealed all entry points, leave two or three traps set in high-risk areas (behind the stove, under the sink) as early warning devices. Check them weekly. Inspect your foundation and exterior walls once a season for new gaps, especially after temperature changes that cause expansion and contraction. Keep vegetation trimmed back from the house. Branches and shrubs touching the house create highways for mice to reach upper-level entry points. A clean, sealed home with no accessible food is a home mice will skip entirely.
Mice are persistent, but they are not clever. Once you remove their food, seal their entry points, and set traps along their routes, the problem resolves itself within a week or two. We went from hearing scratching every night to total silence in about ten days. The most important step is sealing the entry points. Traps catch the mice that are already inside, but if you do not seal the gaps, new ones will keep coming in. A mouse can squeeze through a hole the size of a dime. Walk your foundation once a season and re-check previous patches. Prevention is far easier than another round of trapping.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
Independent studies consistently show that ultrasonic repellers have little to no long-term effect on mice. Mice may initially avoid the area, but they habituate to the sound within days. The FTC has even warned companies about making unsubstantiated claims about these devices. Save your money and invest in snap traps and steel wool instead.
Traps are better for home use. Poison (rodenticide) works, but it creates secondary problems. Poisoned mice often die inside walls where you cannot reach them, causing a terrible smell for weeks. Poisoned mice can also be eaten by pets, hawks, or neighborhood cats, transferring the poison up the food chain. Snap traps give you a confirmed kill in a known location with no secondary poisoning risk.
If you see one mouse, there are almost certainly more. Mice are social and live in groups. A typical home infestation involves 5 to 15 mice. A useful rule of thumb is to count the number of droppings you find in a 24-hour period. A single mouse produces 50 to 75 droppings per day. If you are finding hundreds of droppings, you have a significant population. Set more traps accordingly.
Yes. Mice are excellent climbers. They can scale rough vertical surfaces like brick, wood siding, and stucco. They can also jump about 12 inches vertically and squeeze through gaps as small as a quarter inch. Upper-floor entry points include where the roofline meets the wall, gaps around attic vents, and openings where cables or pipes enter the building. Do not limit your inspection to ground level.
Call a professional if you are still catching mice after two weeks of consistent trapping and sealing, if you suspect the infestation is in the walls or attic where you cannot access, if you find rat-sized droppings (different pest, different approach), or if there are health concerns like a family member with a compromised immune system. Professional exterminators have commercial-grade exclusion tools and can identify entry points you might miss.
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