I am baffled I planted a garden in So. Ca. Mid May this year. Up 3’ on a retaining wall. My garden looks like Jack in the bean stalk. . It is amazing 4 times the growth this year faster than ever. I am obsessive over tomato worms. I check between 2 and 4 times daily. If there is one tiny hole in a leaf I see it, confirm a thread sized tiny worm and pick it off and kill it. So no holes ever left on a plant. I find eggs, and small worms daily. But I am being attacked, mostly at night, once during the day with something eating my first set green tomatoes, possibly 3 inch and smaller. I find half of the tomato or tomatoes of the whole cluster eaten. They leave a pile of shreddings on the ground under the damaged tomatoes. There are no teeth marks as mice, rats, rabbits would leave. There are 1” pieces of tomatoe in the spread pile about an eighth to a quarter inch wide, curved following the growth of the tomatoe. If it were worms or grasshoppers they also eat the plant. I never miss my garden rounds, check twice in daylight and vary my night checks, from early 8pm, to 12, to 2am, 4am and never catch the creeps. We have no squirrels, rabbits, yet have tons of really big lizards. Since almost always night time, I rule out birds, they have sharp beaks and leave marks when they eat, and don’t leave the pile of shredding on the ground. The bite is wide and smooth. No sharp marks as bugs and mice, birds. Finally my money is on these dozens of large lizards. Doesn’t make sense but I can’t blame anyone else. All of the other vermin leave poop. There is no poop at the damage site. There are little log shaped poop around the wall I believe is lizard. Looks like a lot of you are being pranked by the same vermin... so far it is just the low growing tomatoes, up to 8 “ from the ground. All leaves have been removed so I would see insect damage on the plant. Nothing. Just awake to half eaten very green underdeveloped tomatoes. Please share any info out there. I feel so rewarded for this huge productive garden, in a very limited space in a tract house fenced yard, but loosing my cool over the loss of all of the first wave tomatoes. Any help?.

If you are that freaked out by mice and can afford it, hire an exterminator. If you can't afford it, set some humane traps. NOT A STICKY TRAP. The sticky traps are horrible. They severely torture the trapped mice, and also torture the human that put them out, via guilt. No matter how much you hate mice, if you have never seen a mouse or other creature on a sticky trap, believe me, you don't want to. They are stuck to the glue, and are absolutely frantic, trying to escape. They end up tearing their own skin off and breaking bones in the process, adding to the agony. They finally give up out of exhaustion, dehydration, and injury, and death comes slowly and painfully. I hate rodents, and certainly would FREAK if they were inside my house, but I would never subject any creature to a death like that. By humane traps, I mean one of two options: A snap trap that will kill them quickly, or a trap that will allow them to crawl inside but not be able to escape. Then you have to take them somewhere and release them. Probably not high on your list ;) An exterminator will do this for you. But again, there is a cost associated. The advice given about finding the spots where they are entering is very good. Mice can get inside via a hole as little as 1/2" wide. Here is a link that might be useful: Google: glue trap death

I am firmly in the camp that believes having things too sterile is actually bad for your immune system. My great aunt, who lived to be 101 and a half, could eat things out of the refrigerator that none of us young people would touch. Her resistance to bacteria was good and built up over time and exposure. All that to say that if you are not phobic about what lurks in your laundry room, then having it serve mutliple purposes can be fabulous. If you, like several of my friends, constantly use hand sanitizer and try to eradicate every lurking germ, then you are not likely to be happy with having other activities happen next to where you wash soiled clothes. We recently did a renovation and decided to turning an old garage apartment into a multi-function space. It includes a laundry area, mudroom, pantry, office nook, and a small bathroom. The mudroom's French doors are where a garage door was 50 years ago and now open onto a smallish front porch that connects to our driveway. The mudroom is modest in scale. The doors let in lots of light. It has a little stool for the kids to sit down to take off their shoes, a low shelf for storage, several pegs for school bags, coats, and my cloth shopping bags, a small table for important papers the kids bring home, and a small tower with basket that hold sunglasses, a brush, pony tail holders, mittens, hats, etc. A large pantry opens at one end and the kitchen is up two steps at the other. From there a wide hallway opens into the laundry area in the middle section. The washer and dryer are front loaders and mount under a long counter with a deep sink at one end. There are cabinets above the laundry area that hold detergent, stain stick, vases, cleaning supplies, unmatched socks, tools we use often, seeds, etc. Eventually I hope to add a wall mounted drying rack to a space I left blank. I have had my eye on one in the Ballard Design catalog, but cannot yet spend the $$, The ironing board is mounted into the opposite wall and has a lamp, an intergrated plug, hook for hanging a couple of items, and a place to store the iron, hot or cold. The whole set up works beautifully for sorting, folding,and ironing laundry. Seems everyone is willing to help with the laundry now, because it is a pleasant place to be and well laid out. We have deep shelves built into a sort of wall cubbie. There we store two large laundry baskets on each shelf. Dirty clothes are on the bottom shelf, clean on the next. We also use the other cubbies for beach towels, pool bags, my "gift closet" and clothes that need to be donated or mended go on upper shelves, as they are culled during washing. My children never want to get rid of anything, so I have to sneak these out of their sight. I use the laundry sink for flower arranging, cleaning out coolers after a trip, and sometimes as a place to store wet dishcloths and dust rags (on a little rack that fits inside the sink) so they don't stink up the rest of the laundry until it is time to wash a whole load. The countertop serves mutliple purposes too. When clean laundry is put away it becomes a place for weighing food for our monthly co-op splits, drying art works, starting seeds in trays, polishing silver, etc. Instead of a powder room, we located a small, but full bathroom directly across from the laundry work space. Though we often set up a drying rack in the large shower, especially in winter, it is great this time of year to come in from the garden or back from the city pool and be able to take off dirty or wet clothes, hop in the shower, and throw stuff in the wash without tracking through multiple rooms. Towards the back of the house, still open to the laundry area, I have a built in desk with large triple windows over my work space. My computer, filing cabinets, and office supplies are there and it overlooks the prettiest part of our back yard. When I finally finsih cleaning out my boxes of files, we will be able to get to the door that leads out to the terrace. Other than the kitchen where I spent most of my time and even with boxed, it is still a nice space. If I had it to do over again, there would only be two changes I would want to make. First, I might make it a little bigger, as the children always want to be here with me and I would love to have a work space for them too. Second, I would add a bar for hanging up clean clothes until we take them upstair. I asked the cabinet contractor to do this as part of his work, but it didn't happen. I have since decided I would prefer the drying rack for now anwyway, but if I had more room, I would add a small closet or hanging bar. Happy deciding! Perhaps I can post some photos soon.

Who are you calling a lady? LOL, my wife (who is indeed a shorter person) will get a kick out of that one. We inherited the space when we purchased the house and are fortunate that it's so large. Of course we could use some additional room, but isn't that just about always the case? Please note that I, a taller person, need a stepladder to reach the upper shelves of the cabinets. Putting the machines on pedestals would have made the countertop too high for me to fold comfortably, and I'm OK with the height of their doors as-is. The pattern on the floor is similar to the wall tiles, and I believe the material is a simple stone tile purchased from Virginia Tile. It extends all the way to the kitchen, encompassing the back hall, closet, and half-bath. Apologies for my sideways photos. They weren't that way at the hosting site the last time I checked.