Well, I don't know about keeping them away, but soda
kills them!

Really I am not kidding!

Put down a dish full of regular soda pop in a mouse
infested area just before you go to bed. Make sure it
is regular soda- the sugar is what attracts them, and
make sure it is really fizzy- not flat.

The mice are quickly drawn to the sweet liquid, and
gorge themselves on it- and the carbonation kills them
within minutes! (Mice and rats can't burp.)

I have told neighbors who were having problems with
mice in their mud-rooms about this. They were
reluctant to use poisons, because of kids and pets,
but the mice were becoming quite a nusance.  Both
neighbors were skeptical, but tried it, and both found
many dead mice near the dish in the morning, (A dozen,
one told me.)

This is also supposed to work for rats too, according
to the Mother Earth News.

Ellen Anglin