trader-of-some-jacks wrote:
As seems to be the case most winters, we have mouse droppings starting
to pop up (or is it plop down?) in our basement.

Some judicious mouse trap use always stops the problem. But I'm
getting old and tired of the "standard" traps - baiting them, making
sure to not set them off myself, emptying the gross dead mice from
them, repeating...

(By "standard" I'm talking about the kind seen in Looney Tunes and
other cartoons - bait with cheese or peanut butter, and a piece of
metal snaps onto the mouse and kills it.)

What's a "better" mouse trap? By that I mean one that might kill
multiple mice without rebaiting, and that's easy to clean and reuse.

Not so fond of the bait traps that feed them poisoned food, as they
force me to figure out where the dead critters are. I'd rather
confine my looking for carcass hunting to where the trap(s) are.

These two are better than the Looney Tune ones, that I never got very
good at setting, let alone then sitting them down without tripping them,
however they don't meet all of your requirements.

http://www.victorpest.com/store/rodent-control/M130
They are very easy to set, and do the job. Unfortunately, you do need to
reset and rebait them, but I just use something like a tongue depressor
or wooden coffee stirrer (and a jar of peanut butter devoted to that
purpose only!). And they are very easy to empty, but you do have to do
it manually.

Same with this one - http://www.d-conproducts.com/traps/ultra-set.html.
It's even easier to empty, and it's covered so you don't even have to
see the mouse. (I actually got pretty good at emptying it into a plastic
bag without actually looking, LOL).

OTOH, if I had another mouse invasion (like I had a few years ago from
some nearby construction), I'd definitely try the battery op one someone
else mentioned.