Partner annoyed at bunny mess

[WaterOrchid]

So I adopted a gorgeous bunny couple about 3 weeks ago, this decision I considered for about a month and discussed with my partner at length! They currently have an area in the house which has foam ‘jigsaw’ mats to protect the carpet and a cage which remains open that contains they’re hay and litter box. They get bits of hay and bedding in they’re little area but I’d like to think I’m pretty savvy with the duster-buster several times a day. They aren’t exactly litter trained (I’m working on it) put mostly poop in their box or at least in their cage. However my partner is constantly remarking about the constant mess and how ‘tacky’ it looks to have all their stuff there. We only have a 1bdr apartment so giving them their own room isn’t a problem however we are probably moving at the end of this lease and when I brought up the prospect of giving them their own room my partner still whined saying they’d rather set-up a guest bedroom (LIKE SERIOUSLY MY BUNNIES LIVE HERE THEY GET PRIORITY). I have made it clear that putting them outside is not an option considering the healthy risk and I believe an outdoor hutch would be harder to manage. I personally don’t think its that bad while I like t have a nice home I couldn’t give a pickle what other people think (if you don’t like it you know where the door is!) however I can understand where my partner is coming from. Does anyone have any advice for bunnies with minimal mess? or just any advice in general about my situation? thankyou

[LBJ10]

Short answer? Bunnies are messy. It’s just a fact of life. There will always be fluff, hay, stray poops, etc. That’s what it means to have a house bunny or two (or three or four). You will find members here ranging from OCD cleaning to “eh, there’s a poop on the floor”. Everyone has to accept a certain amount of “mess” though. Otherwise, you’ll be spending so much time cleaning that you don’t have time to actually spend with your bunnies.

My advice would be to explain to your partner that you will do your best to keep the area presentable (and it sounds like you’re already doing a really good job!) and your partner is just going to have to accept that there will be stray pieces of hay or fur or poop here and there.

Things to try that come to mind include using a litter screen to reduce the amount of litter you have to use and using fleece blankets as “flooring” since you can wash those. Put the hay in or over the litter box to help contain it and brush your bunnies to reduce floating balls of fluff.

[vanessa]

I shake out their blankets once a week and wash them. I brush them every day. It helps with the shedding. I find that certain materials help the fur adhere, so I brush their dog mats and that gets a lot of hair off – that would otherwise have been everywhere else High litter boxes help contain the hay. But in the end – whichever room I let the buns have a pen, requires a god amount of cleaning. So while I’m bonding them, I will be trying different ways to mae the area in their bedroom seem “new”. because after moving them from room to room – I had a lot of mess to clean up. If you keep them in an x-pen setup, you could pick a fabric to wrap around the bottom 2 feet of the pen to help contain their mess. But buns definitely make a mess. I am fortunate enough to have a spare bedroom – and it is the bunny/cat room. When I let my buns out in another room, I provide them a liter box, and toys that don’t involve chewing. That makes a mess. I give mine branches to chew. So I typically come home to sawdust… I do hope your partner is able to come to terms with a certain amount of mess. I agree with LBJ10 that you can clean clean clean – only to find you have no time left to enjoy your buns – or anything else. For that reason – I clean the liter boxes daily, but other than that, I only clean the rabbit room on weekends. That means shake out the blankets.fleece.towels outside, wash, vacuum the carpet. After shaking out and before washing – I also brush the flooring fabric to keep most of the hair out of the washing machine. They are messy creatures – can’t get around it. That being said – some are more messy than others. Once they are litter trained, there may still be the occasional stray poop. My territorial bossy dominant female leaves about 5 stray poops a day. My cute little male leaves maybe 1 stray poop every 3rd day.
I won’t give you my advice because your partner won’t like it…
All animals are messy. Dogs are messy – my dogs shed like beasts. They leave landmines all over the back yard. They drag mud and sand in., My cat makes stinky bombs and leaves hair and sand on my bed. My birds leave seed husks everywhere. And they can’t be litter trained… Now those little critters are really a mess. Talk about sweeping, scrubbing, disinfecting – wow. What a chore. Some people can accept a certain amount of mess, other’s can’t . Animals can’t be trained to be as meticulous as humans are about their mess. To them, it’s their world. To use – it’s a unacceptable mess. Try cleaning and rearranging your bunnies cage while she is in it – she will not be to pleased, and will rearrange her furniture as she sees fit – which humans might consider disorganized. It’s tough having animals with people who don’t accept their mess and the appearance of their living areas. Fact – you can’t make your bunny be as tidy as your partner wants. You can only keep the mess contained, and presentable. I hope your partner is able to understand this.

[So Fluffy Bunny]

Bunnies are messy, we have an x-pen setup with a 20 dollar rug ( which is cheap considering the other options having been priced out by me and my other half). I try to keep the mess contained but sometimes its like eh, they are animals and they can be messy. I may have OCD but having the bunnies have helped with my constant routine of cleaning, I could be bothered less about the stray bunny bombs I might find in the carpet after they play or within the x-pen setup. While my partner is more in the eh, they can go a day or two on the clean up side, I at least clean the litterbox and fresh hay, food, etc for them. I clean the litterbox, vac once a week for the stray hay ( be careful with a vac, I’ve had to clean out blockages in the hose thanks to the hay… which not mad about) and pick up their bunny bombs when I find them in the carpet ( our carpet is brown… makes it harder to find them), along with their daily washout of bowls and stuff. But all in all, my other half and I have accepted that not everything is going to be clean with the buns, I’m going to find hay outside of their litterbox and their rack, since both will have mouthfuls and then start jumping around and binkying with said mouthfuls scattering the hay around. I just find their antics cute and accept the fact that I have a bit more work to do with keeping a clean house and honestly its nothing like the heavy shed mess that I have with our puppy..

[aBeautifulHope]

I concur with everyone else here…Buns are just messy little beasts! One thing I have found that helped was making sure I had something (In my case I used fleece) under the litter box that would catch any hay/poops/litter when Luna jumps out of the litter box and I also make sure to sweep up and use a vacuum whenever I have an extra minute…& my room does stay fairly clean that way! Most of the time I only have to sweep or vacuum once a day, and some days I don’t have to do more than pick up two/three little poops and shake out the fleece under her litter box. Tbh, having lots of fleece that can be shaken out and washed has worked WONDERS in the amount of hay and poop that would end up everywhere! I’m also blessed with a bun who does 99% of her poops in her litter box, and the few that aren’t in the litter box are in her cage and not outside of it Something else that helped with the aesthetic for me was using cute fleece blankets, a really pretty linoleum for the flooring, cute bowls, a colorful pink litter box, and a cute little hideaway in her space. I also have twinkle lights strung up with little fake daisies around the top of the X-Pen where she can’t reach them to help it be an accent piece in my room vs an eyesore. It’s taken me a few months to get it how I want it, and a couple of hundred dollars (with bits spent here and there…I also bought things I no longer use because I didn’t like it and the end price for her set-up [the stuff I ACTUALLY use] is probably going to end up being somewhere around 200-300, like I said this was all slowly acquired ) but I’m happy with how it’s turning out! Once I finish getting the twinkle lights up I’ll post some more pictures for everyone to see

[WaterOrchid]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I am definitely going to invest in one of those litter box’s with a grate, once my bun’s are more consistent with their business I’ll put down fleece instead of bedding and I even discussed with my partner making a hutch out of an old cabinet (something like the attached pic) so it can blend in with the furniture. At the end of the day my partner loves the bunnies too so we’re just going to have to compromise with each other. Thanks again for everyone’s support Also apologies for my poor spelling and grammar in to original post !

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