The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up After the Environmental Apocalypse

Earth Day is a wonderful opportunity to reflect back on the abundant beauty and resources of Planet Earth. There’s no real way of knowing what day it is anymore--now that the smog prevents us from seeing the sun--but it is always a good day for tidying up. Use these simple strategies to transform your barren hellscape hovel...and change your life!

Take Inventory

Before you can begin to discard, you must first take inventory of your belongings. Excessive waste and garbage may have caused the world to end, but that doesn’t mean you should allow your clutter to keep you from being your best post-apocalyptic self! Pull everything out of the ashy holes in which they have been surreptitiously buried and line them up on the floor. If you can’t quickly get your webby hands on those stashed supplies, it’s a sure sign you need some serious tidying! You’ll want easy access to most weapon-like food the moment your camp is overrun with marauders, bobcats, or marauding bobcats.

Discard

Now that the items you have acquired through life-threatening and morally ambiguous means are all right in front of you, how do you know what to keep?

One question: Does it spark joy?  

Second question: Does it spark?

Fire making materials are going to be essential, even as the forests are engulfed in flames near enough for the billowing smoke to force you away from this campsite in a matter of days. That won’t help you when you need to heat the rat meat you “acquired” from that traveler last week. He claimed he was some sort of priest, which might have been useful to you, given your current spiritual crisis, but you strangled him anyway.

Start With Your Clothing

Don’t begin with the most sentimental items when discarding.  Take a look at each item of clothing you own or have woven from rusty wire fencing and ask yourself:  Is this item something I love? Do I feel beautiful when I wear it? Was it seared to my torso in the nuclear explosion? If the answer to any of those questions is “yes,” then you should keep that item, but be sure to check in every few months to see if it still brings you joy, or if the bubbling puss that has been oozing from your skin has forced the melted fabric to disengage from your epidermis.  

Mentally Organize

Check in with your psychological space. Is it tidy? Or are you flooded with stressful emotions as your hastily constructed shack is flooded with rancid sewage? Your home can’t help but reflect the chaos in your mind. Get your mental house in order by accepting the anarchic, godless world in which you now live, and watch your stash of stabbing bones and hole-digging bones practically organize themselves.  

Hire a Consultant

Tidying can be both physically and emotionally difficult, but it needn’t be done alone.  I offer one-on-one consultations to help you tidy your space and change your life forever, and I am very easy to find. If you are reading this note spelled out carefully with corpses, then you are almost there!  See which way the dead priest is pointing? Just cross the river of burning industrial waste and continue about 30 paces or so into the narrow cave on the left.  

Bring rat meat.

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Angie Albeck is a humor writer and co-founder of the sketch comedy troupe Stealing from Work.  She lives in Vermont, where she divides her time equally between voting for socialists and having opinions about beer.