How to Effectively Control Mice in Your Home

Most people start in the same place. A mouse runs along the kitchen skirting, a trap goes down, a mouse is caught, and for a few days it feels finished. Then a fresh dropping turns up behind the kettle.

That is not bad luck. It is what happens when the easiest step is done and the other three are not. This guide walks through the whole sequence, in order, and is honest about which parts you can do yourself.

Step One: Be Sure It Is Mice, and Current

Before buying anything, check two things. Is it mice rather than rats, and is the activity happening now or left over from last winter? Fresh droppings are dark and soft; old ones go grey and crumbly. Rat droppings are noticeably larger. Our guide to the signs of a mouse infestation covers the evidence in detail.

If you genuinely cannot tell what is making the noise, a pest inspection and survey exists for exactly that. It is £120 fixed cost and tells you the pest, the extent and the access points before you commit to a treatment.

Step Two: Work Out How They Are Getting In

This is the step people leave out, and it is the one that decides whether the problem returns. A mouse seen in the kitchen may have come in at the back of the boiler cupboard, travelled through a cavity, and emerged somewhere else entirely.

Walk the outside of the house at ground level first. Look where pipes and cables go through the wall, at air bricks, at door thresholds and at any gap where render or brick has come away. Then look inside under the sink and behind appliances, where services come through the floor or wall.

Step Three: Remove the Mice That Are Inside

For a small, recent problem, snap traps can work if they are used properly. That means several traps rather than one, set along walls where the droppings are, at right angles to the skirting, and checked every day. Mice follow edges, so a trap in the middle of the floor is mostly decoration.

What traps cannot tell you is how many mice there are. If you keep catching them week after week, you are not winning; you are sampling a population that is still breeding somewhere out of sight.

What we would not rely on

• Plug-in ultrasonic devices, which do nothing about the gap and which mice often ignore
• Glue boards, which cause needless suffering and which we do not recommend
• Loose poison from a shop, scattered where children, pets or other animals can reach it
• Peppermint oil and similar smells, which may move mice a metre or two and no further

Professional mouse control uses protected placements that non-target animals cannot reach, chosen after we know what is in the household. Tell us about children and pets before we start; the guide to treatments around pets and family explains what we tell you and when rooms can be used again.

Step Four: Close the Way In, After They Are Gone

Proofing only works once the mice inside are dealt with. Seal the building first and you shut mice in, where they gnaw their way out or die in a void you cannot reach.

The materials matter more than the effort. Mice chew through expanding foam and sealant on their own. Wire wool packed tight and sealed over, metal mesh, proper air brick covers and bristle or metal door strips are the things that hold. Our rat and mice proofing service is £180 for up to 1 hour, and any further time is quoted before it is carried out.

A trap answers the question "is there a mouse?" Proofing answers "will there be another?"

Step Five: Take Away the Reasons to Stay

Food and shelter will not bring mice into a sealed house, but they do decide how comfortable an unsealed one is. Keep cereals, flour, pet food and bird seed in hard lidded containers. Pull the cooker and the fridge out occasionally and clean behind them. Clear boxes and bags from the floor of cupboards where droppings have appeared.

None of this is a cure. It shortens the problem and makes the evidence easier to read if they come back.

When to Hand It Over

Call someone in if droppings keep appearing after a week of trapping, if you hear activity in several parts of the house, if you find gnawed cable, or if there are young children or pets that make DIY placements awkward. It also makes sense if you have already had mice once this year: the real risks of mice are mostly about how long they are left.

Our mice control service is £260, with no call-out fee, and the price is confirmed before anything is booked. The treatment is guaranteed: if the problem comes back within 14 days of treatment, we return and re-treat free of charge. The mice control cost guide sets out what that figure includes.