Home Story: New House

In case anyone is wondering why I found the time to post about a book when I hardly had time to do the Friday 56 this week, I got all my stuff moved in to my new house yesterday. The house is a still filled with boxes (we can hardly move through the house) but it's all here. YAYYYYY!! The new place is still a rental, I'm still in a duplex but it's much nicer. The other place was simply falling apart. And even though I'm sure I got the rat to go away (or at least stay in the walls where he belongs) the fact that Loki was still way too interested in the kitchen cabinets bothered me constantly. Here's the story I told about that in you missed it. An update to that story: natural ways to repel mice...

I have two dogs, a bird, and a third dog that is over so often he might as well live with me so using rat poison is out of the question. Rats also carry all kinds of diseases so luring it out where it can get trapped is also out of the question. I don't want the dogs finding it when I'm not home and eating it or getting bit. You might have noticed that in the previous story I called him a mouse. Mouse is such a cute name. You think of cute little furry animals with pink noses. You can feel ok living with a cute furry animal with a pink nose living in your walls. Now that I don't live there I feel comfortable calling it by it's proper name: Rat. That's the only thing that could possibly have made droppings that large. I never actually saw the rat, except for one brief image when I caught him scurrying out the hole under the kitchen sink, so I can't say for sure but I feel confident enough to say it was a rat based on those abnormally large mouse droppings. Ok, getting to the repelling. Have you noticed I can be a bit long winded sometimes?

I started researching how to naturally repel mice. I kept finding references to peppermint oil and (oddly enough) Bounce dryer sheets. This seemed so far fetched that I dismissed it at first. But it kept popping up. I thought, ok, Bounce has found this obscure reference to it POSSIBLY repelling mice and has run with it. They have some guy in their IT department just online all day filling the web with notes about Bounce repelling mice on the all the "natural home" websites. But there were a lot of personal accounts of it working. The other big thing I saw was peppermint oil. This one I could buy, so why not Bounce sheets? Ok, I thought, I'll try it. But I'm putting the peppermint oil in there too just in case.

I personally don't use dryer sheets because I hate that smell. Yes, I know, I'm weird. Maybe I'm part mouse. I already had some peppermint oil, so I put it on some cotton balls and threw it in the cabinets and drawers where I know he'd already been plus in all the rest of cabinets in the kitchen and different possible openings throughout the house. I then went out and bought some Bounce sheets to boost my mouse/rat repelling power. I did not notice any signs of that rat in the last month I was there. I like to think this worked but I honestly don't know. He wasn't coming in the kitchen anymore, that's for sure. There were no droppings anywhere in the house but, who knows? Maybe he was just biding his time, waiting to terrorize the next tenant.

So, now I'm in my new place. It's 9:15 in the morning and I'm doing nothing. I've rescheduled my clients for Wednesday so I can work on getting the house in order but that's not happening so fast right now. I'm finding it much more interesting to write about my rat situation. I'm am very much enjoying not worrying and wondering if there is a mouse in my house. For all I know there are mice in these walls too. But this place is not falling apart. I don't have to put plastic sheeting on the windows AND CABINETS to keep my temperature even in the house. Windows I can buy. It's an old house with old windows. But the cabinets should not be ice boxes in the winter and microwaves in the summer. I'm enjoying my central a/c. No more window units! And I know I will love my central heat in the winter. No more cuddling up to the wall heater. I love my tub that DOESN'T fill with bugs coming up the drain pipe throughout the day that I have to wash back down before using it every morning. I love that I DON'T have to keep all-purpose cleaner sitting on the side of the tub because of this. I love my house that DOESN'T tilt to the east. I love that my washer and dryer are INSIDE the house so I don't have to walk out and around the house to get to it. I love that my outdoor water facet is NOT on the other side of the fence where I have to walk all the way around the house to turn it on just water my garden. Some of these things I never told anyone. It's embarrassing to live in a house like that. But now that I don't, I don't mind letting you know. I live in a much better house now! Oh, yes, I'm so glad I moved. Now I just have to get things in order. Now I just have to find my work clothes...