I had a problem with ants returning to my pantry over and over again, despite repeated attacks by me with bug spray and ant traps, etc. (I found Windex to be a useful method of killing insects too.) No matter what I did they seemed to be back the next morning, en masse. I complained to my mother about it, and she informed me that the ants leave a trail of pheremones on the floor that leads them to sources of food, and that if I scrubbed the floor good and clean (a novel idea to be sure) the ants wouldn't return. It worked.
Interesting about the mice though. So if you have mice problems you need to continually rearrange the furniture. (It works especially well against blind mice.)