This usually involves a great deal of heartache and raw skin on your hands, use of great gobs of cleaning solution and scrub brushes.
Me, you know I like a good efficiency. And I don't like heartache or raw skin.
Here's how we do it in the Gold household, circa 2010:
Rule #1: Have a baby that year, which enables you to say things like, "I just can't do that. I'm just not up for doing X,Y,Z - I didn't sleep well last night."
Rule #2: Catch a bad cold the week before Pesach. Usually helps with #1.
Rule #3: Have one spouse take on a major project at work, clocking 50-60 hours a week, for the two weeks before Pesach. Always helps with rules #1 and #2. Better that it's the spouse who usually does the oven and fridge, enabling #4.
Rule #4: Have the cleaning lady do the oven and fridge. Best NIS 150 ever spent.
Rule #5: Don't clean where there's no food. Like Yemima's room. She doesn't crawl that well and can't reach the cookies on her own. Nuff said. Quick peek - oh no chametz? Great. Check.
Rule #6: Spring cleaning waits until retirement, when it can last the entire spring. Oh well.
Rule #7: Close off the freezer. Who needs a freezer over Pesach? I'm not cooking ahead, can get plenty of fresh meats, and since I'll be home all week, leftovers won't last very long. So, no need to scrub at the frozen chametz in the freezer.
Rule #8: Who needs lots of things over Pesach? It's only a week!!! We make do with lots of fresh fruits and vegies, lots of matza meal and eggs, cheese and yummy matzah cookies.
Rule #9: Eat kitniot. Higher taxes for living in the Jewish state have to be worth something. It's not my problem that my great-grandparents were born in Europe. I chose differently.
Rule #10: We really mean it when we declare any chametz still in our possession worthless and null, as the dust of the earth.
Off to look for ways to make the seder fun for my five year old. She doesn't know the mah nishtana yet, and clearly, I'm not pushing her (If I'm not pushing myself, how can I push her?). Let's see if she can complete a Pesach bingo card!
PS. Ben just read this with me and says that I'm a great lister. Hah! He doesn't know the least of it.
Sorry - make that enumerator. See what I get for marrying an editor? And Ashkenazi to boot! Well, at least one of those we can do something about...
2 comments:
Were you at BIU when Ben and Eli came up with JKF / ALEK? (Jews for Kitniyot, or in Hebrew, Ashkenazim L'man Kitniyot).
Ha ha.
Good times.
Oh and OBVIOUSLY I just come here every quarter or so and read everything I've missed :0
I don't think that I was - remember, by my first Pesach in BIU, we were already married :). But its good to know that Ben was thinking like that before I came along too.
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