If you’ve ever taken a subway in New York, you’ve probably seen mice and rats lurking around the subway tracks and ignored them. But when it comes to seeing mice in your home – or on your bed – that changes things. These cute-looking creatures are dangerous and can carry diseases. So, it’s important to keep them away from your bed, room, and home.
Here are 10 ways to keep mice off the bed:
- Make Sure Your Room is Clean
- Do Not Eat on Your Bed
- Make Sure Your Bed Sheets aren’t Touching the Floor
- Move Your Bed Away from the Wall
- Elevate Your Bed
- Fix All The Holes, Cracks And Crevices In Your Room
- Use Essential Oils
- Mousetraps
- Get a Cat
- Contact an Exterminator
In general, mice don’t like climbing onto beds if they don’t have to, especially if you are there. What lures them into taking that chance is if there is something on your bed that they really want. In most cases, it is probably food. So, there are simple ways with which we can get rid of them and hopefully, keep them away.
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Table of Contents
1. Make Sure Your Room is Clean
This step is as simple as it sounds. Cleanliness is important when dealing with any kind of pests. This is because insects and rodents thrive in messy and unclean environments. You want to make sure that you are religiously cleaning your bedroom.
Pick Up After Yourself
Pick up all your clothes off of the floor and put them away where they belong. If you have trash on the floor, pick up and put it in a trash can. If you have a trash can, regularly empty it out.
Any empty boxes, empty plastic bags, everything needs to be put away and tidied up. The extra work is for your own good, trust me.
Do you have a habit of eating in your bedroom? If so, make sure you are picking up the dishes and putting them in the kitchen and not just leaving them on your bedroom floor. Better yet, don’t eat in your room. (OK, I know if you live in a studio apartment then technically you don’t have a choice, the point is to just do yourself a favor and clean up after yourself!)
Dust the Place
Another thing you want to make sure that you do is to dust regularly. This means taking a rag and just wiping down all your surfaces. Make sure you get the sides of your bed, underneath the bed and around your windows and doors.
Lastly, you want to make sure that you remove any cobwebs around the room.
Clean the Rest of Your House
You want to make sure that your home is clean as well. You can’t expect to just clean up your bedroom and not worry about the rest of the house. You will not be able to prevent the mice from entering your room if they are still scurrying around in a different part of the house.
When you are cleaning up your house, apply the same rules that we did when cleaning your room. Always make sure that you maintain that cleanliness. You don’t want to get rid of the problem, then go back to being filthy again and have the same problem all over again.
All in all, just make sure you are regularly dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, washing dishes and whatever else because mice don’t like clean places. Clean places mean no food for them and this way they will pack up and leave.
2. Do Not Eat on Your Bed
Normally, mice don’t like to climb on the bed, especially, if you are on the bed. Mice consider humans to be their predators and so they will not willingly get cozy on the bed with you.
However, if there is something enticing on the bed, then they might not be able to resist the urge to climb on top of the bed. Most often that enticing thing is food.
Sometimes, we may not realize it but when we eat there are crumbs that fall on the bed, and if we don’t clean them up quickly, they stay there and that is what the mice are after. So, by not eating on the bed altogether, we can prevent the mice from thinking about climbing onto our bed.
3. Make sure your bed sheets aren’t touching the floor
Again, the title says it all. It is as simple as tucking the bedsheets under the mattress when making your bed. And if you have a long comforter that touches the ground, you might want just to fold neatly and put it on your bed instead of letting it hang to the floor.
The reason you don’t want your bed sheet or comforter to touch the ground is that the mice can use the cloth as a ladder and climb on top of your bed. By tucking and folding the bedsheet and comforter you prevent that from happening.
4. Move Your Bed Away from the Wall
Since mice can climb on walls, move that bed away. This especially true if your wall has a rough texture that will help them grip the wall easier. Hence, by moving the bed away from the wall, you will make it much harder for them to climb up onto your bed.
5. Elevate Your Bed
This is true if you have a low platform bed or if you have a box-spring and mattress that are on the floor. Getting a base that is at least two feet higher from the ground will help you get rid of this problem. When the mattress is on the floor it’s easy for the mice to climb on top of it so elevating your bed will help keep them away.
One thing you want to make sure is that if you are elevating your bed make sure that the legs of the bed are smooth. If they are rough the mice will be able to find purchase on the legs and climb on your bed. By having smooth legs, it will be much harder for them to find their grip and they will not be able to get to your bed.
6. Fix All the Holes, Cracks and Crevices in Your Room
Mice are known to fit through the smallest of holes you would ever expect anything to fit through. Some say that if you can fit a pencil through a hole, then a mouse can fit through that hole. So, you see, it is very important that you constantly maintain or repair your home.
This means patching up holes and filling up any cracks and crevices not only in your bedroom but also in your home in general. Because there is a direct correlation between the mice entering your house or your room and them getting on your bed, don’t give them any entry points.
One of the common areas from where mice can enter your home is the tiny spaces between your main door and the door frame. As we just covered above, mice can squeeze themselves through a tiny hole. To fix this problem, you can get a door sweep. Problem solved.
A door sweep is a long strip of material that goes under your door to seal the gap between the bottom of your door to the threshold. This can be made of different kinds of materials. The plastic version looks almost like a squeegee. Other door sweeps are made of sponge or a brush-type material.
Having this under your door has many benefits, it not only prevents rodents from getting in, but it prevents other pests, and dust from getting in. And it can also prevent warm or cool air from escaping out.
Anyway, the point is, if the mice cannot enter your room, then automatically there will be no mice trying to get on your bed. This should be motivation enough for you to get a-fixing!
7. Use Essential Oils
Apparently, mice are known to having an aversion to strong smells. This means that we can prevent them from getting near your bed, let alone getting on your bed, with essential oils.
The most common oil that some say work is peppermint oil. What you can do is use peppermint essential oil in a spray bottle and spray it around your bed, make sure that you do not spray it in excess because it can cause skin irritation and it can also be too strong for you.
Just make sure that you spray enough that it is a pleasant amount for you but is noticeable enough to be able to deter the mice away from your bed.
8. Mouse Traps
There are so many of these on the market today. Pick a few that fit within your budget and the ones that you can handle and go from there. Place them around your bed, but be careful that you don’t put them in an area where you might accidentally step on it at night in your sleep.
You also want to put the traps in areas around the house where you think is the mice’s hideout, to get better results. Again, if they are out of the house, then they will not have a chance to get into your room and in turn out of your bed.
Let us take a minute to talk about the different types of mouse traps that are available for sale. Based on that, you can decide which ones are right for you.
Snap Mouse Traps
This is the old wooden contraption with the metal spring trap in which you place a piece of cheese and when the mice come to get the cheese, it springs forth and BAM the mouse is caught. Alas, it doesn’t work like that, because A. Mice do not like cheese and B. These wooden things, 90 percent of the time, do not work like they are supposed to.
Lately, there have been various improvements on these snap mouse traps and the technology has evolved to where it actually works if the right bait is placed in them. The design of the snap traps has drastically changed as well and it has become more user-friendly.
Glue Trap
This is just as it sounds. It is normally small plastic or cardboard pieces that have extremely tacky glue on them and once the mice step on it, they get stuck and viola. So, this is a great trap to use if you are not afraid of mice and are willing to release them once they get trapped.
This is just as it sounds. It is normally small plastic or cardboard pieces that have extremely tacky glue on them and once the mice step on it, they get stuck and viola. So, this is a great trap to use if you are not afraid of mice and are willing to release them once they get trapped.
All you have to do is take the mouse trap outside and pour some oil on it, then slowly pull the mice away from the trap to release them outside. You want to wear think gloves when doing this so you do not get bitten.
If you are the kind that will not be able to do the above, then try a different trap. Because you will kill the mice this way by starving them of food and water instead of the instantaneous death other mice traps provide.
Catch & Release Traps
Again, just like the name suggests, you catch the mice alive and then release them out in nature. These are almost cage-like contraptions that you set up with a luring bait. Then, once the mice get inside the door closes and the mice are trapped.
Electric Traps
Of course, there is an electric version of the mousetrap; we are, after all in the electronics generation, so no surprise there! These types of traps are considered a humane way to get rid of the mice since once the mice enter the trap, there is no way of escape for them, and they are killed by electric shock.
I think some people’s understanding of humane might be a bit different from mine. But regardless, this is one way for you to get rid of mice in your home.
9. Get A Cat
It may sound like a joke, but it is not. Cats are known for their mice hunting skills. And if you really have a problem, and you’ve tried everything, then it might be time to try a cat as well. Or, if you don’t want to go through the trouble of numbers 1 through 8 then a cat would be your best bet.
And if it so happens that your cat does not like to hunt, (or it gets outsmarted by the mice, this reference is for my Tom and Jerry fans) well then, at least you will have a companion in a cat. All is not lost.
10. Contact An Exterminator
Lastly, if all else fails, contact the professionals and they will take care of the problem for you, easy peasy.
There are many exterminators that can do this for you, just make sure that when you are picking someone to come work in your home, that you make sure that they are a reputable business. With all the scams going on lately, you don’t want to just call on anyone because they are the cheapest. Safety first, always. In fact, you can check out our exterminator search tool where you will receive free quotes from thoroughly vetted exterminators in your local area.
Mice generally, don’t get on beds. This only happens if you have a major infestation problem, in which case you really need to deal with the problem right away. Apart from it being unsanitary, mice carry diseases with them and if you aren’t careful, you might contract something.
Apart from carrying diseases, mice can also cause a lot of damage because they can chew through things. For example, they can easily chew through boxes of cereal, furniture, cables, etc.
But for your safety and the safety of those that live with you, take care of this problem. There is no reason for you not to, especially after reading this article!
