Cleanliness is Next to Godliness The cleanliness of your rats enclosure has a huge impact on your rats' health! How Often Should you Clean? Well that depends on; the size of your rats' enclosure, how many rats you have living in it, and the kind of litter you are using. An easy way to find out how often to clean, is first start with a freshly cleaned enclosure. Remember what it smells like clean. Then smell your rats' enclosure every day after that. The day it stops smelling clean and starts to get that ammonia smell, it's time to clean the enclosure again. Keep track of how many days that was, and that is how often you should clean your rats' enclosure. When cleaning; everything from your rats' water bottle, to their toys, and the cage itself, should be scrubbed and disinfected. How to Clean Your Rats' Enclosure... First, take your rats out of their enclosure and put them into a travel cage to keep them safe and out of the way. Our girls, patiently waiting for their cage to be cleaned. Second, take your rats' water bottle, empty it, and spray all the parts with disinfectant. Then use a bottle brush (you can usually find these for sale with human infant bottles and baby supplies) and vigorously scrub out the bottle, making sure to get all the nooks and crannies. Once scrubbed, thoroughly rinse everything off and out. Now you can fill the water bottle with fresh, clean bottled water and set it to the side to be reinstalled on the cage. Third, take everything out of your rats' enclosure and throw it all into the bath tub. Spray everything down with your disinfectant, then rinse everything off with hot water, scrubbing were necessary. Our rats' stuff thrown in the tub ready to be sprayed down and washed. Fourth, you can now either dump or scoop the dirty litter out of your rats' enclosure. If you have the money, you could even buy a shop vac, and then you could just suck the dirty litter out of the enclosure. We personally use a dust pan to scoop out our rats' litter, then finish it up with our household vacuum. Once the enclosure is free of toys and litter, you can put it into the tub to be disinfected and washed. If your enclosure is too big for the tub, just spray it with disinfectant were it stands and use a wet rag to wipe it down with. Lastly, dry the enclosure and add litter. Then dry all the toys and bowls and stuff, and put them back into the enclosure, remembering to reattach the water bottle. Your all done. Your rats can now come back to their freshly cleaned home. Looking for the safest, cheapest, most effective disinfectant? We use a combination of plain white vinegar (from a grocery store) and three percent hydrogen peroxide (from a drug store), each put into a separate spray bottle. You MUST use them in separate spray bottles. If you mix them together they won't be as affective. And you MUST use both of them, one by itself is also not as effective. It doesn't matter which you use first - you can spray with the vinegar, then the hydrogen peroxide, or with the hydrogen peroxide followed by the vinegar. Let both the vinegar and hydrogen peroxide sit together on the item for 20-30 seconds to do it's magic, and then wash the item off with hot water. Used properly, you can't find a better, safer, non-toxic disinfectant out there for your rats.