Spider Plant

This easy-to-care-for houseplant is ideal if you’re not a natural gardener. Requires well-drained soil, indirect light, surprisingly no spiders and occasional watering. So simple!

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Succulents

Aloe plants and cactuses are perfect low-maintenance houseplants. Minimal water and very little care. Just put the cactus in sunlight and it will pretty much keep itself alive.

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Fake Succulents

O.K., so the cactus died. Fortunately, there are artificial succulents. They look just like actual plants but are made of plastic, a material that isn’t alive and therefore can’t be killed. Requires no maintenance at all. Again, it is a fake plant.

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Some Sticks in a Jar

Requires some discretion when choosing appropriate sticks and jars. A few medium-size branches in a nondescript glass vase? Good! Bug-ridden twigs in a half-eaten jar of chunky salsa? Bad!

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Small Pile of Leaves That Blew In From Outside

How did so many leaves get in here when you live in a second-floor apartment?You could clean up the leaves, but that would be easy and make sense. Instead, treat them as an eclectic dead-plant installation in your living room. Requires an open door or window and a complete lack of motivation for simple household tasks.

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A Piece of Dandelion Fluff That Got Stuck on Your Coat

If anyone asks, just say it’s a rescue. Sometimes the best houseplants are the ones that choose us, you know? Requires a whimsical walk through a meadow or just going outside for once.

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Your High School Prom Corsage

You seem like someone who would still have this somewhere. Place it in the middle of your kitchen table. Now it’s a centerpiece! Hang it from a door frame like year-round mistletoe. Then, when anyone walks under it, you can explain how you discovered your prom date kissing someone else during “Cha Cha Slide” but it’s fine and you’re over it now.

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A Bag of Potatoes

If you leave them out long enough, potatoes start to sprout little green things that are technically plants. It’s perfect for when you want to tell your parents, “You should probably stop pressuring me into having kids.” Means actually going to the grocery store.

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A Christmas Tree but It’s April

Who says houseplants have to be limited to potted flowers or philodendron? Is it a written rule? Or can we all just be cool with leaving a Christmas tree up all year, as it is, by definition, a plant inside of the house? Does not require you to celebrate Christmas. It’s 2018 and laziness comes in all religions.

Image Credit... Illustrations by Leah Goren

Multiple Copies of ‘The Giving Tree’

Make sure to keep these near a sunny window with a precocious child who needs to be taught a hard life lesson early.

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A Printed-Out Picture of a Tree

Requires a printer, and you probably don’t even have that. I had a printer once, but I never hooked it up. It sat in my closet collecting dust, which I’ve heard is mostly made of dead skin cells. Maybe dust could count as a plant? Are we plants?

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You know what? Just leave your laptop open with a Google Doc that says “PLANTS” really big. That should convey the exact message you’re going for.

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Mia Mercado (@miamarket) is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. Leah Goren is an illustrator and surface designer.