As winter sets in, you’re not going to be the only one looking for a cozy place to hole up. Winter is prime time for house-bound rodents like mice and rats, and if there’s one extra problem you don’t want on your plate this time of year, it’s a pest infestation. Rodents spread disease, damage property, and have no qualms about breaking into your food stash. Having to trap and dispose of one or two mice may not be the end of the world, but it only takes two mice to make more mice, so the best thing to do is to make your home look less like a mouse hotel.
There are quite a few measures you can take to avoid attracting mice and rats. Sometimes it’s just a matter of assessing the various structures that make up your home, but depending on your level of concern, or how common rodents are where you live, you may want to go the extra mile. Keep reading for some helpful tips to reduce your winter rodent risk.
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Your Front Door
It wouldn’t be an ETO blog without mentioning the importance of door security in preventing rodent infiltration. The first step to making your home more secure and impregnable is assessing your exterior entry doors, making sure there are no easily exploited weaknesses like cracking or warped wood and gaps between the door and frame. It’s common for old weatherstripping to shrink and dry out, leaving entry points for rodents.
Rodens can squeeze their entire bodies through spaces as narrow as their heads, so even a small, innocuous gap should be cause for concern. If your old door is failing you, don’t hesitate. Browse our selection of solid core wood door slabs and get your replacement stat.
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Get a Brush Strip
After you have your new door set up, the next step for added fortification is installing a brush strip. Brush strips attach to the bottom of the door slab using either screws or adhesive, and are great for added security. Even if your weatherstripping gives out over time, you’ll have an extra line of defense.
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Holes in the Walls
Rodents can enter your home through just about any breach in your walls. If you’ve seen mice or rats inside, and you’ve noticed holes in your walls near power outlets, windows, doors, or HVAC vents, you’ve probably found the entry point. Rodents or not, it’s best to seal those holes promptly.
The Center for Disease Control recommends using a combination of steel wool and caulk to plug entry holes. Then, cover the plugged hole with sheet metal, cement, or whatever material is most appropriate for the situation.
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Limit Open Window and Door Time
After spending all night in an artificially heated house, or next to a wood fire, there’s nothing more refreshing than allowing some crisp, cold winter air into your house. That fresh air can help us wake up and start the day, especially when seasonal depression kicks in.
Unfortunately, the longer you leave your windows and doors open, the more opportunities you give to possible invaders. Installing window screens and screened storm doors will help, but the most dedicated pests will readily chew through screens. Your best bet is to be mindful whenever leaving your windows or doors open for that fresh air.
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Declutter Your House
Rodents are attracted to clutter because it provides them ample places to hide. When you have a cluttered home, with objects stacked and piled on top of each other, you’re asking for trouble. That’s especially true for cluttered parts of the home that don’t see much regular activity, like storage rooms, closets, attics, and garages. It’s important to reduce the amount of clutter in your house if you want to lessen the chances of mice and rats taking up residence with you.
If you rely on a wood fire to keep warm through the winter, consider building or buying a rack or platform for your wood, so it can be kept above ground level. Piles of wood are the perfect clutter environment for rodents, and if you have rodents living outside your house, you’ll soon enough see them inside, too.
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Keep Food Properly Stored
Rodents aren’t just looking for warmth and shelter. In fact, they can get those things just about anywhere. What makes rodents so curious about your home that they’re willing to chew through wooden doors, screens, and walls to get inside is almost always the promise of food, and lots of it.
A typical mouse only needs to eat three grams of food per day. That bag of cereal left on the countertop, or the sack of rice half open underneath the kitchen sink? That’s enough easily accessed food to last a hundred mice through the winter. To make your house less of a buffet, make sure all of your dry food products are stored in secure cabinets away from the floor. Never leave food out overnight, and do your best to clean up after meals to prevent crumbs.
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Get a Cat
To complete your rodent-proof house, consider buying a cat. Cats are nocturnal predators, and in the wild, rodents make up no small part of their diet. In fact, there’s a good chance the domestic cats we have today were originally bred by ancient societies to hunt rodents.
Having a cat in the house will not only save you money on traps in the event that mice or rats infiltrate; it will also make them less likely to come in at all. Rodents aren’t stupid – far from it, in fact – and they can smell danger a mile away. To a mouse, a housecat might as well be an Apache attack helicopter.
