For some people, choosing what they wear in the morning is a tough choice. For one man in Ithaca, it's been pretty easy for the last three years. Timmy Zhu has been wearing t-shirts with a special logo for more than 1,000 days.

“A lot of these shirts have a lot of great stories to them, and so it's always fun wearing a shirt that brings back some great memories,” said Zhu.

Timmy has a collection of more than 100 pieces of Operation Smile apparel and each shirt means something.

“I’ve been collecting these shirts for a decade. But I guess it was around three years ago when I kicked off this campaign that I would buy every shirt I could see, because I just love wearing these shirts so much,” said Zhu.

Timmy spends his days in Ithaca as a software engineer and if you can’t tell, he loves Operation Smile. They provide free cleft condition surgeries for children in other countries. Timmy spent years at Ohio State with the Operation Smile club that he founded raising money for the nonprofit.

“All I wanted to do was wear Operation Smile shirts every day, so I decided to wear an Operation Smile shirt for an entire year, and then it became 1,000 days,” said Zhu. “Wearing these shirts feels like I’m wearing a hug.”

Posting a picture every day on Instagram of every shirt he wore for the full 1,000 days.

“The volunteers that I’ve met over the years who are just incredibly, incredibly selfless people ... and it just makes my heart whole whenever I interact with them, and that’s what I love the most about this organization is it has really brought together the best people in the world,” said Zhu. “It’s a big global family.”

He’s even traveled to Mexico to see Operation Smile in action for himself.

“It was very humbling to see how impactful these surgeries are to the children, and to the families,” said Zhu.

When asked if he plans to keep wearing the shirts beyond the 1,000 days?

“Oh yeah, I’ll keep wearing these shirts every day. Well, for one, it's the only shirts that I own, but I do genuinely love wearing these shirts, so even though the campaign was only for 1,000 days, I’m probably going to keep wearing these shirts for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll even get buried in a shirt,” said Zhu.

True to his word, Timmy is still wearing operation smile shirts every day. September 16 is his 1,118th day (or three years and 22 days). He even has a shirt named after him in the nonprofit’s store for his dedication to the organization.