A lot of people use peanut butter or cheese in mousetraps. I have found, however, that gluing a nut such as a peanut or almond onto a standard style spring mousetrap works even better. The reason you do this is because mice can lick peanut butter off a regular mousetrap cleanly without triggering it.
I hot glued an almond to the bait lever on a 4 traps and set them around my basement after I discovered an infestation near my dog's food. With the nut glued to the trap they might get a nibble but will try to grab the nut to take it with them. When they do that it trips the trap. This clearly is superior to when they lick the mousetrap clean!
In one night I caught two mice and the next night I caught two more. I still have the same traps with the same nuts glued to them. I haven't had any mice in the house in a few years since, but just in case I put the traps along the basement wall where the last crew was running (you can see their feces that they drop where they walk).
