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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? – 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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