How to Clean Up Rodent Droppings: Rat or Mouse, Without the Dust

If you're looking up how to clean up mouse droppings, start with what not to do: don't grab the broom or the vacuum. Sweeping or vacuuming stirs up dust from the droppings, so the CDC says to wet them down first. The same steps work for rat droppings. Below is the CDC's method in plain steps, how to tell rat, mouse and roach droppings apart, when to call us before you clean rodent droppings yourself, and how to stop finding new ones.

How to clean rat droppings or mouse droppings, step by step

These steps follow the CDC's page on how to clean up after rodents.

Get ready

• Open all doors and windows for 30 minutes before you start, and leave the area while it airs out.
• Put on rubber or plastic gloves.
• Use a household disinfectant (check that the label says "disinfectant") or make a fresh bleach solution: 1.5 cups of household bleach in 1 gallon of water.

Clean up

1. Spray the droppings and any urine until they're very wet.
2. Let it soak for 5 minutes, or as long as the disinfectant label says.
3. Wipe it all up with paper towels.
4. Throw the paper towels in a covered garbage can that gets emptied regularly.
5. Mop or sponge the area with disinfectant, and clean nearby hard surfaces like floors, counters, cabinets and drawers.
6. Wash your gloved hands with soap and water or disinfectant, take the gloves off, then wash your hands with soap and warm water.

Bedding and clothes that may have been touched go in the washer on hot, then the dryer on high.

Nests or a dead rodent: spray with disinfectant and let it soak 5 minutes, then put it in a plastic bag with any used trap, tie it, put that bag in a second bag, tie it, and throw it in a covered garbage can.

When not to do it yourself

If there are a lot of droppings, like throughout attic insulation, or you find nests, call us before you start. The CDC has extra steps for heavy infestations, and it's usually a sign rodents are living inside, not just passing through. We don't remove or replace insulation, and we don't repair damage. We seal the gaps and entry points rodents use.

What we do

We inspect for entry points, set traps and tamper-resistant bait stations, and seal the gaps rodents are using with exclusion work, to help keep them from getting back in. Inside the home, we use snap traps only, never loose bait. Tamper-resistant bait stations go outside. Rodent jobs get a set number of follow-up visits, and we'll tell you how many visits your home is likely to need. Keep kids and pets off treated areas until dry, and follow your technician's instructions.

Rodent service is quoted after the FREE inspection. After that, our general pest plan is $125 per quarter, about $42 a month, and monthly or custom schedules are quoted after the inspection. For plan customers: "If pests come back between visits, so do we, at no extra cost." There are no long-term contracts and no cancellation fees, just a simple service agreement. We're family-run and licensed, with 30+ years in the business, and hablamos español. See our rodent control page, the back-for-the-season checklist for closed-up homes, and our guides.