On the 4th of July, this is what my room looked like. Most of my friends were shocked…let’s just say that while I adore modernist design, I’m not sure how anybody lives in those houses. Seriously, where do they keep their stuff?!

To what did I owe this sudden turn in minimalism? A bunch of furry little mice.

I had seen a mouse or two in the kitchen in recent months, and the landlord patched up some holes that they had found in the kitchen, and I kind of thought that was that. Case closed. Except it wasn’t closed. First, my roommate saw one come in through our kitchen window one evening. She screamed and the piercing shriek seriously freaked me out. The next night, I saw one run THROUGH MY ROOM.

Holy shizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

This thing just went to a whole new level. I spent the entire night living in terror. See, I was convinced that they were having dance parties all over my apartment. (They kind of were – we found evidence of them all over my room, and all up in our pantry.) Suddenly, all the noises that I attributed to living in an older place with neighbors (“oh, the building is just settling”) seemed like mouse attacks. Were they headed for food? Scurrying through the wall? Nesting in my shoes? Oh holy shiz, one is running behind my desk towards the kitchen!

I pride myself on being able to handle most situations pretty well. Possums, ants, mold and other gross stuff, and earthquakes I can all handle. But when it comes to mice, I am terrified. I know they don’t want to eat me (not while there is a ton of food around…and I live over a restaurant so it’s safe to assume they can feed off of non-humans easily enough), but I hate how they sneak around…and how they are so danged LOUD when they are in your walls…and most of all, how they can carry DISEASES.

I know that I hate mice more than the average person…mostly because I never had to deal with them as a kid.

Growing up in the country, I saw coyotes walk down the middle of the street in the afternoon (nothing like that image to make mothers fear letting their kids play outside), chickens got massacred by both coyote’s and dogs, possums totally got into our garbage, gophers were all over the place (as a means of eradicating the population, my dad likes to asphyxiate them, so he lights their holes on fire and it looks like we have a gnome war going on), and at one point some ‘coons tried to live directly over my bedroom. I swear I thought those things were gonna fall through the roof during one of their spats! Between the farm cats and the owls and everything else, I never saw a mouse in or near my house growing up! There were way too many other predators!

So when I saw a mouse IN MAH ROOM at the age of 24, I had no clue what to do. My home felt totally invaded.

My hearing seemed to be extra sharp, and every noise I heard – mouse related or not – made me jump out of my skin. I started playing hulu non-stop at night to try and drown out the noises – but somehow, every few hours, I’d hear something that would make me jump, and then get all sweaty and make my heart race. This was not a good way to live.

There was a plus side to all of this…..my room got a makeover. I threw out so much extra clutter and things I had been holding onto. I disinfected and dusted everything, I re-washed all my sheets and clothes, and organized what was left of my crap. I had so much stuff I was “going to use later” or craft “when I get the time” or “post on craigslist when I take photos”. All of that stuff was unceremoniously thrown out.

Of course, I couldn’t bear to pick up anything that could possibly have a mouse’s nest in it, so my dude had to do a lot of the “heavy lifting” aka opening things up to make sure they weren’t full of any live or dead mice.

But the next day I SAW A MOUSE scurry by  my bed (one of my “walls” is  set of french doors, so they can just run through my room to get to what they want in the kitchen). As it turns out mice are  most active in the wee hours of the morning – when I’m waking  up to go to work.

I set up so many traps…but mice are really good at avoiding them. From what I’ve gleaned off the internet, mice are pretty damn smart! But their sense of smell is very strong (it’s not just those three famous mice that are blind) and they don’t like peppermint….so then my house, especially my room, became a peppermint-scented island. Let me tell you, it isn’t the most relaxing scent for humans, either.

After over a week of seeing mice, finding evidence of them, cleaning up, trying to find and patch up holes, setting traps, and spraying peppermint….my roommate finally caught a live one and found the hole that it came in through. Success! I know there was more than one mouse in my place – they are different colors (ew, I’m freaking myself out again) – but at least we were making progress.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen a mouse but I’m pretty sure they are either lurking in the walls, waiting for the peppermint to wear off, or hitting up my neighbors’ apartments (which I feel bad about, because nobody should have to deal with this, if you ask me). But the terror is mostly gone, and I can almost have a good laugh about it…almost.

Have you ever had a situation that made you suddenly purge and clean out all your stuff? While I don’t want to relive this whole ordeal, I definitely feel like there’s less stuff weighing me down at home. Having more space and everything off the floors really makes me feel like my room is a place where I can think, unwind, and let thoughts swim around until I make sense of them. It’s a nice feeling.