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For example, I want to tell how is my day was going.

I'd do it like this:

I woke up, then I went to a bathroom and washed myself, then I went to a kitchen and had a breakfast, etc.

Is it correct? I mean maybe I need to use Past Perfect, because it's needed to use when I tell about actions in the Past before some other action in the Past?
And how would native speaker tell about that sequence?

JustLearn
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  • That depends on whether they are leading up to another event, or just an uneventful description. For example "I had bathed and eaten breakfast, when there was a knock at the door..." Another way would be to use the present tense for dramatic effect: "I am eating breakfast and suddenly there is someone banging on the door..." – Weather Vane Jun 12 '20 at 14:21
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    *The guiding principle [don't use Past Perfect unless you really have to*.](https://ell.stackexchange.com/a/5666/126) I wrote that in the context of "Verb tenses when asking a question", but it applies more generally. Native speakers know perfectly well that you don't go to the bathroom until ***after*** you woke up, and you don't wash yourself until after you've gone to the bathroom, etc. Besides which, we usually list past activities *in the order in which they happened*, so we rarely "need" Past Perfect to tell us what sequence things happened in. – FumbleFingers Jun 12 '20 at 14:35
  • Does this answer your question? [Canonical Post #2: What is the perfect, and how should I use it?](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/13255/canonical-post-2-what-is-the-perfect-and-how-should-i-use-it) – FumbleFingers Jun 12 '20 at 14:36
  • Yes. But actually, unless he *wanted* to exaggerate the "list-like" quality, a native speaker would probably avoid several of the "optional" repetitions in your example. *I woke up, went to the bathroom and washed, then went to the kitchen and had breakfast* (note that some of your indefinite articles are completely non-idiomatic in this context). – FumbleFingers Jun 12 '20 at 15:32

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