mouse smell

Question
i have two mice cages the smaller one with a male mouse in it and the other with two females. i now clean the cage 3 times a week Monday Wedsday and saturday. the smell is very musky and and overpowering. they are in a open window room all alone. the smell is know starting to come out of the room which scares me. when cleaning i wash all objects in the cage with soap and the cage with light bleach and then rinse thoroughly. i tried using all natural odor control but it doesnt really work. i would like to know what you do with the smell and how to better prevent it.

Answer
Ah, the age-old question, how to make mus musculus smell as nice as he looks.

   I use Lysol, the lemon scented kind, when cleaning their cages. I house my mice in ten gallon tanks and when cleaning them out, fill them about 1/3 of the way with water after throwing in two or three capfuls of Lysol and then let all the toys soak in there for about ten minutes or so. I then scrub everything out and dry it. Bleach is good for disinfecting but it doesn't do much for odor. Lysol disinfects and gets rid of odor.
   The smell is getting worse because you're cleaning the cage out so often and your male mouse especially, is getting agitated and is scent marking like there is no tomorrow. The fact that he is in proximity of females makes this worse. He's scent marking to entice them to his cage and the longer he goes without results the more he will scent mark.
   I can help with reducing the smell of the urine though, in their drinking water put 1 tbsp of vinegar per quart of water and 1 tbsp of vanilla extract in that same quart of water. This reduces the smell by about 50%. I have tested this out as I have a male and four females living together and if they are given pure water the smell becomes obnoxious within half a week. If given that particular solution it elongates the time between washes to ten days. Another thing that helps is putting a small amount of baking soda in all four corners of the cage. Mice usually go in the corners and this will definitely help to neutralize. I've never used hay or soil but I have heard people have success with those things so you can try that as well.    
   Bedding can also be helpful in reducing smell. I use about five to seven layers of newspaper at the bottom of the cages and then cover it with about an inch or two of Carefresh brand animal bedding. Don't use scented Carefresh by the way, I tried the mint and let me tell you, mint and mouse urine is by far the most noxious smell I have ever smelled, this includes the time I dissected a cadaver in human anatomy. Carefresh is much better than the pine and cedar bedding I had used before realizing it was bad for mice, changing to Carefresh had the added benefit of reducing the smell as well as keeping my mice healthy and breathing easy.
    If you are using a solid running wheel either rinse it out daily with Lysol and water or invest in a 1/4" mesh wheel because the smell is really bad when the mice are peeing and pooping on the wheel. I have a solid wheel and a mesh wheel in the cages my mice use, the mesh one is used by older mice and the solid one by younger mice. If they're very small sometimes, rarely, their feet get stuck and get injured or broken. This has never happened to me personally but that doesn't mean it isn't a possibility.
   If you have done all those things the smell should dissipate, try not to wash the cages more than once a week. That just makes things worse. If after maybe two weeks you notice no change you'll need to move the male mouse because the presence of females could be causing him to go nuts with the scent marking. The chance of this happening isn't too great but it is out there. Best of luck and if you have any further questions feel free to ask a follow-up.