I know, it’s less than a week until Pesach (Passover) and I haven’t posted anything about my preparations!

For some reason, people seem to assume that I’ve already finished or am close to it.  Nothing could be further from the truth!!

This year I decided to do things a bit differently than in the past.  We’re now in a smaller living space than in the past, and thanks to having moved overseas  seven months ago, have a lot less stuff than we used to.  I always try to keep Pesach preparations reasonable so that the spirit of the holiday doesn’t get lost in the unending drudgery of cleaning, and this year that means that we are doing our cleaning significantly later than we have in the past.

Here’s this year’s schedule – a schedule for last minute-ers! :):

– week of March 25 – I asked the kids to clean their rooms sometime between Mar. 25 – 30, ideally at the beginning of the week (though everyone didn’t choose to follow this suggestion :)) so that they would be able to enjoy being able to spend the rest of the week relaxing.

Last week I also somewhat cleaned the enclosed laundry porch and main bathroom.

– Sunday April 1 –

• clean master bedroom/bedroom/office
• finish cleaning laundry porch (this is my ‘pantry’ so it’s more about organization than cleaning)

– Monday April 2 – go to Jerusalem for the day; I hope to get some clothing shopping done after technical business is finished since I have no maternity clothing and at 5.5 months I think it would be a good thing to have. 🙂

– Tuesday April 3 –

• will stop using kitchen sink in the evening

– Wednesday April 4 – the main cleaning day for the kitchen and salon (living room/dining room combo).  I’m planning to assign all of the older kids one big job each.  This will include:

• clean living room/dining room, couches
• cover dining room table, wipe down chairs
• clean stove and oven, kasher
• clean refrigerator
• wipe down cabinets, line those we’ll use for Pesach

In the evening when the littles are asleep, we’ll kasher the countertops.  Usually at this point, we would unpack the Pesach dishes, but I left them behind with the intent to have them sent on someone’s lift.  They have yet to leave the US, so I’ll be buying disposable dishes and a few basic pots/cooking implements.

Thursday April 5 –

• change sheets in all bedrooms
• do all laundry
• shop for Pesach food
• start cooking for Pesach (being in Israel means that we will only have one seder instead of two, so while I usually like to have several days before Pesach to cook in advance and freeze food, and everything has to be ready accordingly, this year it would be overkill)

Friday April 6 – erev Pesach –

• make sure everything is ready for the seder
• have everyone take a long nap midday so they’ll be able to enjoy the seder that night

And that’s it!

Avivah