Get Mice Out of Your Garage for Good

If you’ve been seeing mice running around your garage floor, in and out of cracks and crevices in your personal space, that’s never a good sign. It’s not just that you’re sharing your house with an animal intruder; it’s also the risk that mice will make dents in your wood, floors, walls, and, if you’re particularly unlucky, even your garage door opener cables.

Unfortunately, the problem is never just about one mouse. One mouse can give birth to 14 more little ones within only three weeks, meaning that an infestation is truly around the corner the second you see a mouse in your space. We say this not to make you panic but simply to raise awareness that this is an issue that must be treated with urgency.

Exterminators are always a good option to nip this issue in the bud, but if you’re hoping to keep your budget a little more threadbare, we have some easy DIY solutions that can keep mice away from your garage for good.

Have the Mice Already Arrived?

If you’re looking for a cruelty-free way of getting mice out of your garage, there are ways to avoid the typical mousetrap and poison remedies to a mouse infestation.

Before you make your entire garage fully mouse-repellent, work on getting the mice that have already entered your garage out of it.

Trashing any and all food lingering around your garage floor, whether it’s composted garbage or unsealed bulk goods from Costco, will let mice know that your garage isn’t a reliable source of nourishment.

Check out these humane mouse traps which you can fill with peanut butter; these traps won’t kill the mouse but will simply trap them for long enough such that you can bring them outside and set them free into the wild. Just make sure you take them at least a mile or two from your house so there’s no chance they’ll find their way back.

Mice can infiltrate anywhere, even places we don’t expect them to.

If you happen to own a cat, the solution is simple, if a little gory: Just let your cat in the garage and your pet will figure out the rest.

Give a shot of spritzing white vinegar, peppermint essence, or other scents like these to keep mice at bay – they tend to hate these aromas and will be instantly repelled by them, even in small quantities.

To spread around those scents, give a dozen or so cotton balls a small spritz of peppermint oil and plop those cotton balls across your entire garage floor, making sure to specifically target the areas in which you frequently see mice running around.

While none of these solutions will be an absolutely permanent fix to steer mice away from your home, they should do the trick as a temporary solution to mend your current infestation for the time being. Once you’ve cleared the mice from your garage using these simple remedies, you can go about more permanent addressing of the issue.

Make Your Space Uninviting

Clean up the clutter and tie up any unpackaged foods to let the mice know that your space doesn’t have any little rewards and treats to incentivize their invasive behavior.

● Tidy up!

First thing’s first: Get things in order so that you can see where these mice might be coming from in the first place.

● Put all of your food in bins, and make good use of food clips

Mice aren’t as picky as us humans – they’ll settle for anything edible, so make sure you’re attending to anything that a mouse could see as a food source.

● Keep the garage on the outside

Fresh garbage has a pretty repulsive smell if you ask me. Yet, mice seem to love it! That means you’ll be better off keeping your garbage outside of your garage.

● Storing firewood? Keep it outside too

Mice can make a home out of anything, but they particularly like firewood as a nesting zone.

Protect Yourself, Protect Your Walls

Now that you’ve “mouse-proofed” your garage temporarily, it’s time to think about how you can prevent these issues from cropping up in the future.

First of all, get rid of all the branches around your roof.

This will keep squirrels away by making sure they can’t jump onto branches as a means of reaching your roof.

It is important to insulate your walls to prevent rodents from making nests in them.

Insulate Your Walls as Soon as Possible

There are many materials on the market when it comes to wall insulation, but a few of them, in particular, will serve you well for keeping rodents out.

Above all, we encourage you to work with polyurethane spray foam. Unlike icynene spray foam, polyurethane spray foam will occupy every little hole in your walls, giving rodents very little space within which to take up space and invade.

Since spray foam is not a rigid insulator, mice can still technically enter your garage through this insulation material and, perhaps, nest in and around it. However, this is pretty unlikely; spray foam has no properties in common with food sources, so mice won’t find it productive to make their home within it.

Due to the bitter mouthfeel of polyurethane foam, this insulation material will make a great deterrent.

Get Rid of Tiny Holes

It’s worth giving the walls and floors of your garage a good inspection and assessment every now and then to make sure that there aren’t any mice chewing through the materials and finding their way into your personal space.

Spray foam can do a great job of eliminating cracks and crevices through which mice might enter your garage.

Although insulation is not a 100% fix to your mouse infestation, it will do a good job of disincentivizing mice to enter your garage, as they’ll quickly see that it isn’t a hospitable environment for them to eat, sleep, and reproduce in.

Should you find that mice are entering your garage right through the door itself, you might want to think about replacing that door altogether, or at least fixing the area in and around the mouse entrance.

What type of garage door should you opt for?

With so many garage doors on the market, it can be difficult to choose exactly which one you’d like to go with. From insulation materials to unique styles to top-shelf technological features, there are tons of garage doors out there. Below, we’ve written a few tips on how to go about selecting the right one for your house.

It’s only worth considering metal and aluminum doors; though wooden garage doors have a great look, they won’t be as effective as metal materials in keeping rodents out.

Insulation is paramount to keeping your garage rodent-free, so we recommend opting for a door that comes fully insulated, benefitting you both in the short term and in the long run.

We carry doors made out of galvanized steel, which is a material both affordable and effective at keeping mice outside and away from your garage.

Consult our R-16 and R-12 construction garage door models as well as our Standard+, Townships Collection, and Acadia 138, which are made with polyurethane foam injected at high pressure inside the internal structures of the door.

Here, you can see our insulated R-16 door, filled with polyurethane foam.

For a garage door that will keep the internal temperature of your garage steady due to its crucial weatherstripping technology while also benefitting from state-of-the-art insulation, look no further than our garage doors. When it comes to keeping rodents out for good, our doors can’t be beaten.

Ready to Change Your Garage Door?

Here at Mortland Door Systems, we can fix up and replace garage doors of any style and size. Whether you’re in the market for a completely new door or you’d prefer to simply spruce up your existing door with some insulation or new materials, we’re the team for you. Give us a call at 781-826-2212 or contact us through our website.

Whether it’s their style, their materials, or their accompanying technology, our garage door models are distinctive and work with almost any kind of house. To create a unique model, follow this link and see what our garage door might look like superimposed onto your house.

Shoot us an email for an individualized quotation.