Get R' Done Day

Peter McKay Tue Oct 27, 3:00 AM ET

Creators Syndicate - Last Saturday, I was out running errands while my wife stayed at home to catch up on some long-delayed house cleaning. I called her between stops to see how it was going.

"Not good," she said into the phone. "One, the washing machine just started to smoke. Two, I just noticed the wall in the second-floor bathroom has water damage and will have to be fixed. Three, it looks like we're going to need …"

I didn't hear the rest because we got disconnected. It happens sometimes when you press really hard on the little red button on the cell phone.

I've known about the washing machine for months. It started with a little leak at the bottom, just a trickle across the floor. The washer was close to a floor drain, though, and unless you actually stood in the water while touching the washer, there was little if any chance of being horribly electrocuted. And, to be fair to me, I don't actually do laundry. But the little stream of water got bigger and bigger every week, until I knew that at some point something was going to start smoking.

The problem is, in our busy lives, there is never a good time to call a washing-machine repairman. The repairman will show up sometime between 9 and 5 on a workday, or maybe not, while I spend the entire day waiting for the doorbell to ring. Then he'll tell me he needs to come back once he's ordered parts. Before the ordeal is over, I'll have lost two days of work. And it's safe to say I'll realize it would have been easier to ignore the leak, just wait for the smoke and then go buy a new washer.

There's never a good time to do anything else, either, and all the little annoyances that pop up around here just keep piling up. I removed an old deck this summer, piling the wood behind the house out of sight. But you can't throw out lumber with the garbage. You have to get some guy with a truck to haul it away. I don't know anyone with a truck, at least one who will answer my calls. So the grass has grown so high that I can no longer make out the pile.

The "check engine" light on our station wagon came on two months ago. We pulled over to the side of the road, panicked for a second and then kept going. When we made it to the next exit, we vowed to get the car to the dealer the next chance we got. We've been vowing that for two months now, while the angry red "check engine" light glares at us. There's always someplace we have to be other than the car dealer. At some point, we know, there will be smoke.

One weekend, we all went through our closets to donate clothes to a thrift store. We filled up one of those huge black contractor bags with enough coats and sweaters to keep an extended family of Inuits warm. The bag sat there in the corner of the living room for a month.

It's endless. The drain in our tub is so slow that every shower is a bath. The gutter on the back of the house is growing a small tree. Every glass in our cupboard is chipped or cracked, each in its own unique but dangerous way. I have suits that are so badly in need of dry cleaning that if I stand out in the hot sun, I smell like a sausage pizza. If I actually sat down and wrote out a list of all the things I meant to take care of but haven't, it would be overwhelming. Luckily, I don't have the time and, of course, can't find a pen.

Maybe the president should declare a new national holiday. It wouldn't be in honor of any particular dead guy or national event. It would be called "Do That Stuff You've Put Off All Year Day," or maybe just "Get R' Done Day." All Americans would be expected to take that entire day and accomplish something that's been bugging them all year. Folks could clean out the vegetable drawer in the fridge that's starting to smell really strange. Or they could go through the huge pile of magazines that they never read and is now threatening to topple over. Millions of us could spend some time going through our closet, trying on pants that haven't really fit since 2003, and then tossing them.

I'm using the holiday to get organized, and the first thing on the list is get a new washer. That is, if I can find a pen …

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