Dryer sheets are often used to make clothes smell fresh and clean. They also work great for repelling squirrels! The strong scent of dryer sheets will keep squirrels away. You can place them around your property or add them to a bag and hang them in areas where squirrels are active.
Scents like white pepper, black pepper, and garlic are naturally unpleasant to a squirrel. The same goes for sweet smells such as peppermint. Try spraying your plants and flowers with water and then sprinkling on pepper or peppermint oil to deter squirrels.
Try sprinkling cayenne pepper, ground chili peppers, or pepper flakes around your plants when they are ready to bloom. Peppers have “capsaicin” which squirrels hate, so it's a natural squirrel deterrent. Or, make a pepper spray; you can mix dried pepper with apple cider vinegar.
If used for preventative reasons, they may work well to keep rats and mice away. Most of the all-natural or DIY methods used to prevent mice are said to work because rats are repulsed by their smell. This is especially true for dryer sheets—while these smell wonderful to us, they are abhorred by rats and mice.
They're said to dislike the scent of coffee grounds and peppermint, or you could make up your own recipe with vinegar, garlic and onions or peppermint oil to spray in the garden. Chilli flakes and pepper might put them off, so try a sprinkling of these – it's often used to keep squirrels off bird feeders.
Aluminum foil is a good way to keep squirrels away from your roof. Cut the aluminum foil into pieces, and then affix them to the areas you do not want them to climb onto. Make sure that they are placed in areas that are easy for you to access so you can remove them when the time comes.
Bait and Trap. If you're dealing with a squirrel infestation inside your attic, basement, or crawl spaces, one of the easiest ways to get rid of them is to use baiting and trapping methods. Most squirrel traps allow you to catch and release the squirrels, but there are also spring traps that will kill them.
Another strong smell that will discourage mice from your home is dryer sheets. Place fresh ones around mouse hangout points, or stuff them into entry holes. Same thing here, though: make sure to remove them once the smell wears off. Nothing looks nicer for a nest than an unscented dryer sheet.
Most dryer sheets contain the ingredient linalool, which can be found in plants like lavender, basil, and coriander, all of which naturally repel common garden pests. Similar studies found that this ingredient is also useful for repelling bugs like mites, weevils, beetles, and German cockroaches.
Most dryer sheets are made of polyester that is covered with positively charged ions and has a strong fragrance. While that fragrance may smell pleasant to you, it is repugnant to mice, so they stay away. So, while using dryer sheets won't kill the mice in your house, it will repel them.
Yes, Irish Spring soap can help to keep squirrels away. The scent of the soap is unpleasant for the animals and will prevent them from entering your home or yard. You can use either a liquid soap solution or shave bars of Irish Spring and sprinkle it around areas that squirrels are known to frequent.
One of their most feared predators is the common fox. While you don't have to get a pet fox to keep squirrels out of your yard, you can create the illusion of a fox nearby. Fox urine can be purchased at almost any hunting and fishing supply store and is an excellent squirrel deterrent.
To protect your pet, use statues and silhouette cutouts of natural predators to scare squirrels away from your home. Fake owls, foxes and hawks may deter squirrels from venturing too close to your property. You may also use motion sensor floor lights to deter squirrels from your property at night.
A study published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health found that Pine Sol did not have any significant effect on squirrel behavior. The study concluded that Pine Sol may not be an effective method for keeping squirrels away.
Coffee grounds will keep squirrels away from your garden because they do not like the smell. Simply sprinkle some fresh grounds on the soil surrounding your plants every two weeks. You can also try spraying your plants with a hot pepper spray for the same effect.
Other university studies demonstrate the effectiveness of dryer sheets to repel certain insects, including mites, food-infesting beetles, German cockroaches and weevils. These studies, however, do not show any significant impact as a mosquito repellent.
Get Rid of Dust and Hair
Use dry or dampened dryer sheets to wipe dust and hair off of blinds, shelves, ceiling fans, window screens, and even plants. For television and computer screens, a dry sheet will remove surface dust and decrease static electricity.
The bugs that are theoretically most likely to shy away from the dryer sheets are certain mites, food-infesting beetles, and weevils, German cockroaches, and, according to one study, fungus gnats.
Dryer sheets help to disperse static cling by coating fabrics with chemicals. Unfortunately, these chemicals can harm your pet if they chew on or ingest a sheet, even a used one.
Mice have a horrible vision but a great sense of smell, so rubbing a dryer sheet along their path or placing these sheets in the corners of your pantry or cabinets may repel them.
Irish Spring Soap has a strong fragrance that helps to repel mice. Their sharp sense of smell finds this fragrance to be too strong. Many testers say that putting soap shavings strategically keeps their home mice free. However, some others say the mice ate the shavings, and it made no difference.
Squirrels have strong noses and are not fans of pungent aromas like coffee, peppermint, apple cider vinegar, and soap. For an easy, low-cost solution, sprinkle leftover grounds in your garden, spritz vinegar on your vegetation, place soap shavings around your patio, and rub peppermint oil on your furniture.
Use natural deterrents: Since the goal is to disgust squirrels and not kill or poison them, you should use natural deterrents. This can include clove oil, cinnamon oil, peppermint oil or cayenne pepper applications.
Most recommend using foil when growing tomatoes in pots: putting it over the pot, then poking holes for the seedling and for water. The only theory given was that squirrels don't like reflective surfaces, which is true, although most of the time the shiny object needs to be moving to achieve optimum scare factor.