Arts &Crafts, How-To's, Upcycling & Repurposing

Tis the season. It’s that time of year where we start to see mice in our homes or maybe not in the home but on our properties. Where there’s 1…. There’s 2. They are usually never solo.

Last year we bought this mice repellent at the hardware store. It was little bags that had things in it like cinnamon and some other natural things. No chemicals. But it worked great! Do you think I could find it again let alone what the name was? Not a chance. So I’ve been doing a lot of research and found something really similar to what I bought last year.

All natural ingredients that most of us may already have in our kitchen cabinets. Honestly I only had to buy one thing.

Mice do not like the ingredients I used due to their smell and they cannot ingest spicy foods. therefore putting these in a bag the smell is strong enough to deter them. They will avoid it.

Supplies needed:

Cinnamon sticks

Star anise

Chili flakes or red pepper flakes

Whole cloves

Cayenne pepper

Dried peppers. ( I’m not sure of name I’m sorry) see picture

Mesh bags. (dollar store)

Step 1

Once all your supplies are gathered, start adding them one by one to the bag. I could not find Star Anise in the stores, anywhere for some reason so I went with the alternative, Star Anise Extract. I left this ingredient for last and dripped the Star Anise on to the other ingredients.

Close the bag (mine had draw strings)

Now put the bags in your house where you don’t want the mice to enter or if you already have mice, put the bags where you’ve seen them.

Short story- we had a mouse living in one room and traveling somehow through the house to get food from goodness knows where. One of our cats killed it and we have not seen another one since. (2 weeks). Like I said though, usually where there’s 1, there’s 2.

That’s it. I made about 8 bags and put them through out my house including the garage. Sorry for the glare on my photos. Hope this works good for you guys as it did me!