# Cleaning



## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

Could I have some tips for blasting the yuck from cage accessories ect. I did a clean the other day, the iglo and food tray were really gummed up and soacking them in the bath with bleach didnt help much and made a terrible smell i dont want to smell agian!


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## Night (Feb 23, 2007)

I spot clean my cage twice a day, picking up any droppings outside of litter boxes and resituating towels. I also wipe down any accessory that has anything on it. Spot cleaning is essential for a really healthy cage. Every week I soak all of the toys, accessories, and cage ramps in the tub with hot, soapy water. My cage never smells or even looks dirty.

How many rats do you have, and what kind of cage(s) are they in? How often do you clean, and how do you clean?


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

I have 2 rats. below is the cage i have and they have a hamster habitat attached which they love. Ive changed from wood chips to paper bedding so i think it will be easier next time. I grains mixed with water whch made them hard to remove. I empy littert trays and put the spillages into litter trays once a day and im going for once a week for a full clean, but i guess its not that riged-ive changes there bed a few times in between and have got onto flannlet sheets which Poppy loves and i can chuck them in the washer. The cage has card board and lino lining the floor and flannlet sheets for cosy spots and hammocks


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## Night (Feb 23, 2007)

Considering how gunked-up the accessories were in your description, and the fact that soaking them doesn't help, it sounds like you need to clean a lot more. An animal's cage needs to be as clean as possible, with no build up of urine, feces, or other "gunk."


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

i think it will be alot easyer now they are using the litter trays. i read someware a bout a baking soda n something mixture?


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## Poppyseed (Feb 1, 2007)

I clean the accesories at least once a week now but after hearing the baby wipe idea I may start spot cleaning them. Trouble is not everyone is a clean freak XD So geuss I have to do the best I can because well... I'm not.


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

:lol: nither am i poppysead, my rats cage is prolly the cleanest thing i own! A bit of dirty is a good thing, bugs are becoming resistant to cleaning products and peoples immunity is changing, possibly due to all cleaning they say. wel thats my excue anyway! 
the thing with doing the igloos n stuff so often is i feel bad. They seem very teritorial about there beds. they go to such trouble moving stuff around for me to tip it in the bin every day!


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## Poppyseed (Feb 1, 2007)

Odin freaks out when I clean the cage, and tries to stay in the various cage parts I'm not cleaning at the time so he can stay near home. Such a fraidy rat. Bastian likes to take the opportunity to escape and explore everything possble. I feel bad for Odin but Bastian seems to like it when I totally clean the cage XD

And so does Bert, though I think he's confused when he goes back as to why things smell so different. I've found that all nature peppermint castril soap works well for cleaning out his TEMPORARY aquarium home (any residue left is non toxic and peppermint is good for the respitory system as well). I can't wait to get him in with the boys but rules are rules and it's not time yet besides I need to build a larger cage before it's time anyway. That will more than likely be next weekend if Odin's vet funds don't wipe me out D: Even then I will probably only move Odin and Bastian into the larger cage and then Bert into the current wire rat cage or vise versa until I feel comfortable moving them together after the lice problem is totally gone and Odin and Bastian are on their antibiotics for their myco.


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

Sorry your haveing so many health problems.
thanks for the soap idea i like the sound of that. ive been worrying about residue of cleaners, i'll have a look online, i'd like to make up a bottle of sray so i can scoosh and wipe. Like today i put a bottle capfull of milk in the "kitchen" area, Lola liked it and picked it up with her mouth carrying it away to hide it-of course it went everyware and Lola went to bed with an empty cup!


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## Stephanie (Mar 25, 2007)

I put all of the accessories in the dish washer once a week and i also spot clean like night said twice a day if not more. My boys are not in their cages much but when they are they go everywhere LoL i found a puddle in the food dish last night and ugh it was nasty when i do the dishwasher thing i also do an extra rinse


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## fallinstar (Nov 26, 2006)

ive noticed that roobs cage dosnt get gunked up and the boys didnt in their old cage but in this cage everything keeps gettin really gunky and horrid!


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## Sara_C (Mar 10, 2007)

Vinegar is really good for getting those white wee deposits off. It's acidic, and urine is alkaline so it dissolves it  Every time i clean out my rats cage i put it in the bath and run the hot tap into it, then swill it around and empty the water down the loo. I don't always use detergents, i just dry the bottom out whith kitchen towel and this seems to get and lingering bits of dirt off.


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## Dimitrius (Mar 19, 2007)

I've read that taking it to the self car wash and using the pressurized water with soap works wonders, make sure to give it a good rinse!


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

:lol: seems a bit extreme!

its ok to mix bi carb and vinegar-it can be used to clean bathrooms, website also had a load of other ideas for natural cleaning ect

http://www.zerowaste.sa.gov.au/prog_bathroom.php


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## reachthestars (Feb 27, 2007)

I'm a bit of a clean freak, so I spot clean my rat's cage daily and clean a little more than once a week (every 4-5 days or so). 

For accesories, on cleaning day I fill the tub with hot water and let them soak as I clean the cage. Once I finish the cage I clean the toys with the bleach/soap/water solution I used on the cage (1 part bleach to 10 parts water, and a little antibacterial soap for bubbles). I've never had issues with resistant gunk.

Vinegar _eats away_ stuck on urine . I love it for grimey cages (*cough*martins*cough*) but hate the smell so only use it it I really need it.


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## OnlyOno (Apr 4, 2007)

vinegar is a neat i idea i didn't think about, i'll def try that. i usually only clean half of picasso's cage at a time so that it still smells like home. she FREAKS out and begins squeaking and popcorning and nipping if i clean the whole thing while she's in it. i think it's kind of funny but i'm sure it's stressful, so now i take her out and only clean what i have to.


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

Aww, thats really sweet


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## linz_04 (Mar 5, 2007)

Vinegar is AMAZING!!! It gets all the stuck on stuff off like magic! That's all I use to clean the cage with. If the smell is too bad for you, dilute it in some water. Reachthestars, what don't you like about the martin's cage? I'm thinking of getting one.


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## reachthestars (Feb 27, 2007)

Oh don't get me wrong, I *loved* my Martin's! The only issue is that I had an R-695 and I'm 5 feet tall and 105 lbs soaking wet (and have a bad back due to a friend's horse giving me a 'back massage'). 

It got to the point where I would just clean the cage in my room rather than lug it to the bathroom, and gunk built up on the back bars (they weren't scrubbed as well). 

When I got my FN I gave the Martin's a DEEP cleaning in a much larger area and it was fine. 

I have to say though, every cleaning day with my FN and I love my Martin's a little less .


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

Ive been looking at things cleaning and freshening and I wuld have to say
*Use vinegar and baking soda away from your rats as the mixture produces C02
Use esential oils with caution as some have been provent to harm rats
*

Rats have been used alot in lab studies-sad for those rats but it does mean there is alot of information from the studies that will benifit pet rats


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## 2manyrats (Apr 10, 2007)

Baking soda eats away caked on urine really well, also. I soak all of my cage accessories in it whenever they're grimy, and it just melts right off. My method's really scientific: dump a bunch in the sink with some warm water. 

I don't use bleach or any cleaning chemicals in my house - I'd never subject my ratties to chemicals, either. It's vinegar, baking soda, borax, and Dr. Bronner's only.


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## lizzydeztic (Mar 15, 2007)

how often do you guys clean the entire cage? i have the fleece fabric covering the floors and that does well with soaking up urine, but how often do you scrub the entire cage down? every week when i do a complete cleaning of all the accessories i wipe the floors down with baby wipes to get any urine up. of coarse i change the fleece once a day. should i be doing more? like sanitizing the entire cage once a month?


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## ladylady (Apr 5, 2007)

Ive made it up as I went along, Ive cleaned things as I thought they needed it-change Lolas bed more often than Poppys cus Lola pees the bed, theres an area that they pee in there not supposed to so It gets changed more often than other places. i change the litter trays in the evening if they have been used. I have a skooshy bottle with vinegar and water in it for cleaning surfaces and bars. Things that get peed on get soacked at least once a week. Sonds like you do a good job to me


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## twitch (Jan 4, 2007)

may i say how much i LOVE the car wash? $3 and 5 mintues later and i've done a deep deep clean. but i only do those about once a month in the warmer months. i just recently discovered the car wash though so i might try it out in the winter when it comes to see if it works ok. but i would think the self cleaning ones would be closed and if they're not the water will probably freeze on the cage. but we can try it in any case. 

for normal cleaning i change out all the bedding and hammocks once a week (in the morning of laundry day so they're all clean ot go back in and don't stink up the apartment waiting to me cleaned). i take out the corner trays, chin. block and igloo and wash them in the sink with dish soap. if they've kept the blankets where they're supposed to be for the most part all they need is a rinse but they seldom leave the blankets in those ones. they jam them in the hamster balls or organizing baskets instead. with those i just take a baby wipe to them and wipe them out. they're not that bad normally anyway. if they are really nasty then i cut the zip ties and wash them in the sink with the other stuff. i use the baby wipes on the floors and rock perch as well. i'll wipe any cage bars that need it at that time as well. then i empty the litter and take windex to the mirror behind the cage to get all the urine off that and make all shiney and nice. with the size of the cage now this can take a while. and the babies all play tug with me so its not as easy as it could be but they seem to have fun playing too. i'm actually looking forward to cleaning the cage now that Iedani is in her new home. you could never tell if she was coming to like the others or was mad because you changed her blanket around. made for a bit of an exciting cleaning.... 

after cleaning over everyone is bouncing around and checking stuff out. normally the hammocks get changed around a bit each cleaning session as well so they have to get to the new arrangement.


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