Keep mice away with peppermint. (iStock)
It’s pretty clear that having mice in your home is not a pleasant experience. Even if they seem innocent, having mice can be quite dangerous for your home. However, getting rid of mice doesn’t just require a slew of mousetraps and cheese. Mice can be easily avoided around your household by simply adding the scent of peppermint in corners where they congregate.
Although natural remedies aren’t always the answer when getting rid of pests (like using cucumbers to get rid of cockroaches, along with many other methods that don’t kill cockroaches), peppermint is a successful natural remedy that works when trying to repel mice. This has to do with the nature of mice, which rely mostly on their sense of smell instead of their vision. Mice have an incredibly weak vision but a strong, keen sense of smell. Which makes sense as to why mice typically go for a large chunk of stinky cheese, right?
Peppermint obviously has a strong sense of smell, one that mice are not too fond of. According to Victor Pest, peppermint is a menthol that is very potent and can irritate their nasal cavities. A whiff of peppermint certainly will keep them away.
Now there are two ways to incorporate the smell of peppermint into your home. The first is growing peppermint plants and leaving them around the house. The smell will deter them from entering or roaming around in the first place.
If you’re not too keen on growing a peppermint plan, then you might prefer using peppermint oil instead. You can spray the essential oil in different areas of your home that are typically accessible to mice. If you’re trying to catch the mice, you can strategically spray the peppermint oil in places that don’t have a mousetrap. In theory, this should lead them to wherever you have placed it.
Once you’ve used the peppermint to drive the mice away, here’s how to keep mice away and have a mouse-free house.