I took five days off. Well, two of them were the weekend that I would normally get and one was a paid holiday, so I really only took two days off, but I had five days off in a row. In the beginning, I was worried about how I would spend all that time. Now, I’m wondering how I didn’t get more done.

This is a list of things I learned about having time off.

1. My animals are incredibly lazy. I didn’t expect much from the cat since, in the nearly nine years we’ve spent together, I’ve never really known him to do much, but the dog surprised me. This is how my animals spent the vast majority of five days:

I’ve been up for two hours already and that is precisely where the cat was when I woke up this morning. He did get up once to eat when I fed him, but then he went right back to his spot. Being a cat, apparently, takes a tremendous amount of energy.

2. There aren’t as many hours in the day as you think there are. At first, I was worried that I would have too much time on my hands and not have enough things to fill my days. It actually turned out to be quite the opposite. I hardly managed to do any of the things I wanted to do.

3. Walk-in closets are dumb. I have a massive closet. It is, quite literally, half the size of my old bedroom. My bathroom and closet together are bigger than the room I previously lived in for nearly five years. Nobody needs that much space. You know why? Because if you have a lot of space, you end up with a lot of stuff. A lot of the stuff I have, I don’t need all the time.

I have a luxurious vibrating foot spa that my best friend and I splurged on a long time ago. We each bought one for the other. I use it every so often when I’m feeling indulgent or when my feet are sore. I have an iron and an ironing board that I might use once or twice a year. I have a hair dryer that I never use since I always let my hair dry naturally. The last person to use it was a house guest. I have a dog crate I don’t need since my dog has the run of the house. These are things I don’t need, but I keep anyway because you just never know. Besides, there’s no reason to get rid of a perfectly good, hardly used hair dryer when someone might need it some day.

When I moved into my new house in August, I threw all this stuff in the closet. I never really organized it. The closet was the last thing to be done and every time I walked in there, I groaned and said to myself, I really need to do something about this. Finally, this weekend, I did. It took three days. Three days! But, we finally have a respectable, organized closet that anyone would be proud to walk through on the way to the cavernous bathroom.

4. It’s way easier to get things done on weekdays. Those big pink bins up there? I had to buy those since I didn’t have enough bins. I went to the store during normal business hours, when I would normally be working. There was nobody there! There were no lines, I didn’t have to say excuse me a million times to get through crowded aisles and there was plenty of parking. Realizing this, I went grocery shopping and to the hardware store to stock up on supplies. I am well stocked in everything and it involved no fuss nor muss.

5. Naps are awesome. I normally only get to nap once during a week on Saturdays. I can’t take naps the rest of the time because I take sleeping pills that require at least eight hours to work so I’m not all zombie the next day. If I take a nap, I won’t be as tired, so the pills won’t be as effective. On Saturdays, it doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, so I take naps. With five days off, I was able to take four naps. I even had some vivid dreams during these naps. Naps are brilliant.

6. I should really take more time off. As I talked about the other day, I don’t take time off unless I need to. I should stop doing that. From now on, at least once a year, I’m going to take at least five days off in a row. While I’m not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, I feel relaxed and well slept. Aaah.

All in all, I didn’t get as much done as I wanted and I hardly managed to do anything that was just straight-up fun, but I did wrestle the closet into submission, so yay me. We should all take more time off.