Schedule for what to do when

amother

Orange

Tue, Mar 13 2018, 11:18 pm

My 2 cents:

1) Decide what you can sell and mark it off now. You can always change your mind and clean it if you have extra time later. Closets, cabinets, pantry, etc. - just sell 'em.

2) You know when you need to FINISH your kitchen - it has to have 24 hours of not being used for hot before you can kasher (at least the way my Rav holds, yours may be different).

Depending how dirty things are, you should start doing the heavy work now so you can just wipe stuff down closer to Pesach - I.e. if you need to defrost your freezer, scrub your stovetop etc. (best gift to myself EVER - a cheap Pesach range - best $450 I spent), do that now so there won't be so much time later for grime to build up.

If things are basically clean, you can ignore it for now, until three days or so before you kasher.

3) For rest of house, go from least used to most used rooms. The main goal is to straighten things up enough that you can do Bedikas Chometz there. So either go through boxes of clutter or move them to a closet you're selling, sweep out from under beds so you can see if there's chometz there and will be able to check through it quickly. If drawers are potentially chometz-sensitive, take 3-4 minutes per drawer and move contents to another surface, then back into drawer. No need to wipe out drawer (unless you literally see it caked with chometz!).

If you for example pick up a couch cushion and see dirt there you can just leave it. Only actual chometz is a problem, and tiny crumbs nobody would think of eating aren't a problem either.

Nothing in bedrooms etc. needs to be bleached or wiped down unless again you see a significant amount of chometz literally caked on.

4) Leave your energy for the dining room and kitchen, where you're actually cooking and eating on Pesach. Any chometz that would get into your food on Pesach is an issue, so that's where to be more careful. Depending on your minhagim you wipe down your chairs, cover your table, etc. and kasher/cover counters and sinks.

So in short, there are three phases:

1) Straightening up house so it's possible to do Bedikas Chometz, moving piles to areas that will be sold, deciding what can be locked up and sold.

2) Deep cleaning kitchen and dining room. Give yourself a few days before you kasher.

3) Kashering and cooking. This can be the day before Bedikas Chometz or a week before, depending on how you roll.