PMA - A part of life

"Why bother putting anything away when you're just going to use it again?"

We are generally permissive parents, which means we give ourselves permission to have a messy house unless we are having people over who are clearly more fabulous than we are. For the normal quick visit by the random person, we just mumble, “Sorry for the mess,” assuming they, too, have lived with enraged ferrets.

When the sirens go off and we need to straighten up, the ground zero of such a project is always the PMA -- Permanent Mess Area.

Our PMA is at the bottom of the stairs, a perfect place to drop whatever it is you are holding whether you enter from the garage or the main door. I dump stuff daily, always hoping that someone will do something with it. I feel I have already done my part by bringing the crap in from the car.

The trick to modern living is not to eradicate the PMA, but rather to set a boundary and contain it. Certain rules must be followed, such as there must be a clear walking path around the PMA. The PMA may contain jackets and backpacks, but when sporting goods and fruit find their way in then things go south rapidly.