Saturday, January 8, 2011

Deter Mice with Peppermint Oil!

As you may know, we live in a 100+ year old farmhouse in the country. And anyone who has lived in an old house knows that Mouse Problems tend to occur off and on.

I have tried many things to either keep the mice away (I *thought* I filled all the holes they could get in at...guess not!) or kill them(when regular snap traps didn't work for an extra-gingerly-eating mouse, a small stretchy hair band wrapped around the trigger and carefully baited works better). Before anyone goes off on me for not live trapping and relocating the mice....I would be doing that quite frequently in the fall/winter and I just don't have time for that! It's not that I've never done this(I have), but it's not something I want to add to the daily chore list.

I have read about using Peppermint Oil to deter mice, but was pretty skeptical about it and used other techniques instead.

Until the last time the varmints got into my silverware drawer/cabinet that I had just cleaned out! That is soooo aggravating, not to mention gross!

So, in desperation,  I got out the Peppermint Oil and cotton balls. I put 3-5 or so drops per cotton ball and put them at the back of each of my drawers in the kitchen.

Guess what? So far, NO sign of mice in the kitchen! Yippee! And when I open the drawers, it smells like Christmas!

I assume I will have to refresh the cotton balls ever so often, but am thankful that (so far) it is working.
(and my hubby got me a live mouse trap to put on the kitchen counter just in case--much better than a snap trap)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this still working?

Tanya said...

Peppermint oil worked the best of all of the natural ways I tried to deter mice.

However, it was not enough to keep them out of our attic and unfinished basement. We opted to put poison in the attic and basement and I use peppermint oil in my kitchen drawers in case any mice should decide to come into our living space.

I am not certain whether it's the poison or the peppermint oil, but I haven't had a mouse in my kitchen for quite some time.