How to get my dog to stop scratching to get out of room when left alone?

Here is my situation. My wife and I have an italian greyhound (female 3.5yrs/old) & a chihuahua (female 7.5yrs/old). Both dogs are trained to go on litter pads. We live in a 1 floor house. We keep the litter pads & food in our laundry room. Here is the problem. When either my wife or I is at home the italian greyhound behaves wonderfully. Never has any accidents, always uses her pads without us having to tell her. Basically is a perfect animal for us when we are at home. However, here's the problem. When my wife and I go out the iggy seems to forget all the rules and just goes to the washroom anywhere in the house. My wife and I got so tired of cleaning up messes every day after work so we thought maybe it would be easier if just kept the dogs confined to the laundry room during the day. Atleast this way the dogs were close to their pads so there was no excuse for them to be lazy and not use them. So keeping them in the laundry room solved our pee/poo problem, but now we have another problem on our hands. The iggy is now scratching at the door every day trying to get out of the room and it is ruining our door/floor. How can I get her to stop misbehaving when left alone? Just to let you know, the laundry room is a fair size, about 10'x10' with a window, so it's not like the dogs are crammed into a dark room. We are not sure what to do. We can either leave the house open for them and not have to deal with the scratching problems, and clean up pee after work, or confine them to the laundry room during the day and have the iggy scratch the floor/door up. It's a catch 22. Also, i know the chihuahua is not causing any of the problems because she is very laid back/obedient so i have no doubts who is getting into all the trouble. FYI, the iggy gets plenty of exercise, I take her jogging every day for about 5-8km, plus she plays around in the back yard for several hours a day after work. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.