Coffee Grounds: Natural Rodent Repellent?
You may want to live green, but how far are you willing to go when it comes to protecting the beauty of nature? Are you willing to live side-by-side with rodents, for example? Rodents have been around homes since the beginning of time with the promise of easy pickings, and cats often do the dirty work of keeping them away. But not everyone has a cat and even if you do, not every cat is cut out to be running mice and rats to the ground. So it falls on you to handle the problem, organically if possible.
By average_jane_crafter via Flickr
It begs the question – can you do away with or at least keep away mice and other pests without resorting to poisons? If you were to use a poison, as many do, for pest control, you’d soon have a problem of an entirely different nature. Mice are notorious for taking poison and then heading home to die. Unfortunately the mouse’s home is most likely inside the walls of your home. So suddenly you don’t have the odor of coffee to deal with emanating from the floors, you have the odor of a dead mouse behind your walls. Fantastic.
In one bit of good news, coffee does help you out a bit at this point. Sprinkling coffee grounds, or putting a small bowl of them near the wall that seems to be the source of the smell will help to diffuse the odor, a far superior idea than cutting open the wall to remove the dead pest.
Green Ideas for Pest Control
Your next choice might be to use a trap to catch the mice, just add peanut butter to lure them in and they will almost almost find a way into the trap. If you have the stomach to actually kill the mouse yourself after catching him, this might be a solution for your home, provided you don’t have children who might be harmed by the traps. For most of us, however, the idea of repelling the mice and simply keeping them away is the best plan of all.
Peppermint Oil is a good way to discourage rodents – soak cotton balls in the oil or mix with water then cover the areas you know they move across. Some also suggest growing peppermint plants in key areas for the same impact.
Cat urine may also scare them off, if you can get them to pee into the cup!
Some even try snake poo in an effort to scare off mice and rats, and if you do have access to this via a zoo or pet store then it might actually be worth a try.
Confirming here that coffee doesn’t work as a deterrent, but there are other organic compounds that do. Just like you can find traditional pest repellents for homes and yards, there are now organic varieties as well. The organic version will likely be a bit more expensive than a $1 mouse trap or a can of chemically-based pellets, but using organic rodent deterrents protects you from diseases and damage caused by pests and it protects the mouse, too, by encouraging it to find another home. An all-around best solution.
And if all else fails…. get one of these!
Image via Wikipedia
Rebecca Garland is a freelance writer and blogger working hard to populate the internet with interesting and engaging content. As a mother of two with an eye on keeping things safe for her family and future generations, Rebecca tries to use as many natural products as possible including natural pest deterrents. You can learn more about Rebecca from her website.
Ground to Ground 
I just discovered that mice and/or rats have chewed through a bunch of used aluminum Nespresso capsules that I had stored in my garage awaiting recycling! They actually chewed through the metal capsule!
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I just put a coffee ground disposable cup in my room where we have a hole in the closet and the mouse has been eating a lot of the coffee I put out I haven’t seen him in a while either I’m hoping it does do something I’ve been reading that nice don’t like coffee but that a lie the mouse that we are trying to get rid of loves the coffee and it keeps going back to the coffee to eat it I have little coffee grounds all around the cup I also read that the coffee will make their digestive system fail almost and the hunger to die out I also read that when they eat a bunch of this it effects them chewing on wood to make holes or ect.
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Coffee grounds definitely work to deter voles. Have been using them with success for 5 years.
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We have a mobile home and are positively overrun by these damned critters. I have fought and fought and fought without gaining an inch of ground. I’ve tried electric traps, peppermint oil, keeping food locked away in glass jars, I have two excellent rat killing dogs – I’m at the end of my rope. It’s gotten to the point where I hang my clothes on door hooks – I can’t fold and put them in a dresser. I sold my bedroom suite; can’t use it. There are multiple mouse holes in every room; I patch one and another is there the next day.
The only thing I know to do is sell and move, which I’m in the process of doing. An apartment in town with pest control sounds better than living in the country any more.
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I’m very sorry to hear that. Good luck with the move to town, I hope it leaves you pest free!
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Coffee grounds don’t deter mice or rats, but letting them get into your coffee K-cups is a way to kill them. Had one eat a bunch of my wife’s K-cups and then went crazy. It went into our outside laundry room and chewed through things that had been out there for years including an oil container and droll bit holder. We assumed it died later from a heart attack or overdose.
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Do they eat the actual packaging also? Would be a good way to dispose of the bloody things!
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I can concur. I had some K-cups in a box in my garage and found a dead chipmunk who evidently had eaten through the plastic and had a last meal of fresh coffee grounds.
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I awoke at 3am to rustling noise in my bedroom and figured it was a mouse and after retrieving my flashlight, I saw its little beady eyes, gross. I didn’t know what it was after though as I don’t have loose food up here. Well 2 weeks later I found out. I kept a pouch of coffee grounds in my top dresser drawer which I use around base of home to deter spiders/ants. It was all chewed up and coffee all in my drawer. It was the friggin mouse! I had no idea that they liked coffee. I don’t even drink the stuff. Haven’t seen it since though so I hoped it choked on it, little son of a…..needless to say, they can and will get into your coffee. I am a witness. So strange because it bypassed my trash bag full of left over food and the peanut butter in the traps? Ugh!
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I keep anything edible in my room in metal canisters like the ones dark chocolate come in.
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Fantastic! I’ll be trying this out. Something’s going on in the attic! Yikes!
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Try 4 t of jiffy cornbread mix mixed with 4 t of baking soda. Mix and put in a covered plastic container with a hole so they can go in-and eat. They will go to their nest and die it won’t hurt animals either
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We found mice making a nest in our lawn tractor and in my husband’s truck.
Maybe its time to try a little peppermint oil….or something….to deter them.
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Bazooka!!
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Hot Pepper flakes!
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Thanks for the information and the like. Would you mind if I share some or all of the information. You have posted here in this writing to the Readers on our blog? This would be very useful to them.
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Please do, I would be honored.
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Can I use coffee grinds to cover up dead mouse?
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Sure thing, as long as you pile a heap over the little guy.
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Yet another good read. Are you sure you can’t use coffee grounds for mice and rats?
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Well Anthony, after this one went live I just had to test it out for myself. There are a couple of mice in my yard from time to time, and unless I have a good layer of leaves and twigs over the car tire compost bins they find their way into all those vegetables. After putting down a thick layer of coffee grounds onto the tire (2 inches), they kept away. Not sure if it was the smell of the grounds or the taste, but it worked.
So based on my experience, coffee grounds are a natural rodent repellent!
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Your article says coffee grounds dont work and here you says they do
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Nice pick up Frank. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to ask that question. If you use it as a barrier to where they want to go, they avoid it. Otherwise it is not very effective for this purpose.
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Interesting piece. I think we’ve become a bit too much like pre-Revolution French aristocracy — overly prissy and expecting to live in a world devoid of anything natural. I’m glad there are people out there who want to restore how we do things to a more natural state. Thanks for this piece, Rebecca. At our house we have 3 cats, so they’re our only pest problem 😉
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Wonderful, keep it up thanks.
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