Yesterday, Saturday, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. I walked the dog, washed, dried, folded and put away 8 loads of laundry, vacuumed, dusted the tops of all the art work, scrubbed the hard water stains out of the toilet bowl with a pumice stone, made supper and washed the dishes. At the end of the day I wrote about forgetting to smell the roses.

Before I went to bed, after a day of just cleaning, I said to my husband Nick, “Hey Nick, tomorrow I will have been alive for 20,000 days. Go to www.therobertd.com, he has a day calculator on how long you have been alive.”

Nick typed in when he was born and saw how many days he had been alive.  Then he typed in my birthdate.

“Pamela, today is your 20,000 day.”

“Today?”

“This isn’t how I would have spent today, if I knew it was my 20,000 day. I thought tomorrow was my 20,000 day.”

I went to bed last night sad. Sad that I had wasted a special day.

This morning when I woke up, I realized.

1.Every day is special. 

If I wouldn’t have spent an entire day cleaning on a “special day,” I shouldn’t spend an entire day cleaning on a non-special day. And, ALL days are special. You are alive.

Yesterday I thought, “I just want to get caught up.” 

2.You will never get caught up. 

Right after you wash all the dishes someone will eat and make a plate dirty. As soon as you have washed, dried, folded and put the laundry away, someone will spill milk on their shirt.

There will always be dust. There will always be dirty laundry. There will always be a dirty dish.

Today, on my 20,001 day alive I will remember to stop and smell the roses at the start of my day, not right before I go to bed.

3. Leave a few dishes in the sink and laundry in the tub and get a life.

At worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
—Rose Macaulay

( If the only thing you do is clean, you are not living. The dust will still be there when you are dead. Go visit a friend, write a letter, paint a picture, write a story, go for a walk, read to a child, walk a dog, pet a kitty.)

And, really, dust is only dirt.

What will you do today?

P.S. Robert D. Smith wrote 20,000 Days and Counting. A Crash Course for Mastering Your Life, Right Now.

The book is an affiliate link. The pennies Amazon pays me, helps pay for kitty litter. I have four cats and seven litter boxes.