I'm overwhelmed too!

seeker

Thu, Mar 26 2015, 12:48 am

I didn't want to rain on anyone else's parade because the situations are all different. So here's mine.
I take a pretty chilled-out approach, stick to the basics, slow and steady, and it worked for me last year and the year before but now I'm feeling the overwhelm - I'm sure it'll be ok in the end but maybe y'all can help me with the stress and maybe even some tips to smooth the way!

One big difference this year is that I'm working through the day before bedikas chometz while my kids have off from tomorrow. Last year I had off almost as much as the kids, sent them to a "pesach camp" and did my stuff then. This year Pesach camp is just cheaper than hiring a babysitter for 3 regular workdays. I have to do the rest either with kids around or after they fall asleep.

Another difference is that DH is working much later hours this year. He will not be around to help in the evenings leading up to Pesach. Not to help with cleaning, not to help with the kids, nada.

And the Shabbos thing is stressing me out. Part of my very chilled approach to yomtov is that it's no big pressure to be ready in time - I can put up a pot of something after yomtov starts and it will be ready long before shulchan orech. Sure if you're ready in advance you can relax more on yomtov, but for me cooking is not un-relaxing. Being ready to cook in advance, however, is very very un-relaxing. I do cooking a LOT better than I do time management. I am FINE with waking up yomtov morning and putting up lunch. Or, better yet, grilling chicken cutlets in a grill pan five minutes before lunch and having them fresh and hot. Of course I more-or-less manage Shabbos every week, but doing Shabbos AND Pesach at the EXACT same time is stressing me out.

Plus, I really want to do some more shopping - one kid has dresses but they're sleeveless so I need to get shells that match, I wouldn't mind something new for myself but at the very least definitely need a new snood, we all can survive without but would be happy with more socks. AND I still need to buy the perishables for Pesach including some things that need to be Jewish (I already either have or bought almost everything nonperishable or that can be bought in non-Jewish stores) And I need to toivel some things. Which means only one thing: I need to go into "town," specifically the Jewish part of town at the exact same time as all the last-minute people AND all the families shopping for their kids who are off from school AND all the lucky teachers who are off from school. It's going to be headache-inducing and everything is going to take ten times longer exactly when I don't HAVE ten times! I don't know when I am going to do ANY of this! On Sunday? After work? Both equally rotten.

Meanwhile, back on the farm... My fridge and freezer are cleaned with chometz contained in one box each, but I got a little carried away with my shopping so they're quite full already even though they don't contain enough different kinds of things, just too much of the things I did buy. Oops. Will have to rearrange that. I cleaned one cupboard shelf in advance for putting early Pesach shopping. See comment about fridge, same story there. I have consolidated most of my actual chometz (not that much this year but we'll probably sell it anyway) and non-kosher-for-pesach food items (quite a lot) into the area I plan to seal off. Realization: Last year I think I stashed my chometzdik pots, dishes, etc there too, it doesn't look like they'll fit there now, I guess I really have been doing too much sale-stockpiling OMG what now? OK OK deep breath it will all work out. The problem with this is that what's left I can't put away because we're still using it.

How do you deal with that problem of still needing to use things you'd like to get over cleaning?

I feel that the bedroom, bathroom and closets are chometz-free enough to not have to do anything else but check. Of course we'll sweep and throw all textiles in the washing machine a day or so before Pesach just for good measure. Toys are easy enough to see no significant chometz therein. I will have the kids "clean" them to keep them busy sometime. I will have to go through our toiletries to make sure there's no oatmeal moisturizer or anything. Not sure what else to look for.

So my main issues seem to be:
Kitchen is a mess
Stuff still needs to be bought
Kitchen needs to be turned over in time to cook
Cooking needs to be finished in time for Shabbos
Working until Wednesday afternoon, have kids underfoot and no help. (And the only local teens are the oldest of large families, definitely not for loan)

imaima

Thu, Mar 26 2015, 4:29 am

seeker wrote:

I think you are stressing and overanalyzing everything more than ncessary. Sometimes it is easier to stop thinking about things and just DO them. You could have cleaned out a drawer in the time it took you to write this post.
I wonder why you need to physically shop for shells, how about online?

Simple1

Thu, Mar 26 2015, 9:08 am

seeker wrote:

And the Shabbos thing is stressing me out. Part of my very chilled approach to yomtov is that it's no big pressure to be ready in time - I can put up a pot of something after yomtov starts and it will be ready long before shulchan orech. Sure if you're ready in advance you can relax more on yomtov, but for me cooking is not un-relaxing. Being ready to cook in advance, however, is very very un-relaxing. I do cooking a LOT better than I do time management. I am FINE with waking up yomtov morning and putting up lunch. Or, better yet, grilling chicken cutlets in a grill pan five minutes before lunch and having them fresh and hot. Of course I more-or-less manage Shabbos every week, but doing Shabbos AND Pesach at the EXACT same time is stressing me out.

I wish I had suggestions, but I just had to say, I really can relate to this approach. While most people are packing freezers, I felt like I was crazy, but this worked for me.

amother

Jetblack

Thu, Mar 26 2015, 11:45 am

Regarding the Shabbos thing - it's definitely nerve racking. But realize you only have one day of Shabbos to prepare for - it's not the whole YonTiff. The night can be like a regular Friday night or similar, fish, soup, chicken/meat,salad. Also remember at night after the seder no one is very hungry at all.
You also have to list for yourself what you need for the k'aara and do that.
Shabbos day can be primarily chulent. You can cut up eggs and make egg and raw onion for the Shabbos day meal - you can do this on Shabbos Also, salad can be prepared on Shabbos day. Cut up/a bit mashed avocoda as a dip - can be done on Shabbos. It's great on matzo if you "bruk."

I usually work until erev Pesach. So much has to get done at night or in the early morning.
You can probably do the food shopping late at night if that will work for you - when you can avoid the crowds. Some clothing stores will offer extra night hours - such as the shells - try to call them and see. You might find crowds but better than taking the kids with - if husband is home to babysit or maybe you can borrow a teenager for a short time.

seeker

Sun, Mar 29 2015, 12:17 pm

Thanks for the support, all.

As I said, there are Pesach camps but all that helps me is that it costs half as much as a babysitter would. It only covers my working hours when the kids are usually in school. Then we're all home at the same time. I am taking off Thursday so I get a whopping 3 hours alone because there is a half day of Pesach camp.

Nobody's making playdates on erev Pesach, either.

I have budgeted for cleaning help and really want some - Pesach I can probably make but it would make me SO happy to have Pesach WITH a sparkling bathroom and floors and stuff that I won't get to just from chometz cleaning. But there is no cleaning help to be had. Everyone is busy or unreachable. Last yomtov I booked someone for erev yomtov and she never showed up or answered her phone so I was left with an envelope full of money and ankle-deep dirt all yomtov.

I could not have cleaned a drawer while I wrote this because I sat down to write after I was already fully wiped out from working hard all day, though mostly not on Pesach preparations.

My real problem is that I am having a hard time just keeping up with life day-to-day, that without having any vacation from day-to-day life I am not sure how to fit in Pesach on top of that. Pesach alone doesn't faze me; it's that I was already struggling to stay on top of everything else. For example, I spent Friday afternoon taking a kid to the pediatrician with what turned out to be strep: traffic getting there, impossible to find parking due to alternate side, gave up and switched to a later appointment to avoid the alternate side problem, waited a while for the doctor, and had even worse traffic getting home (plus a little getting lost trying to find an alternate route to avoid the traffic and ending up back where I started). So there went a whole afternoon that could have been spent getting ahead. (Better than last year: I'll take strep over stitches any day...)

G-d loves me, though: we got a last-minute (well, I guess it's not the last minute yet, but later than expected) invitation out for the Seder, and while we usually prefer to stay home this is someone I would actually enjoy going to so I prevailed upon DH to take mercy on my stress and now I don't have to worry about being ready for a seder before Shabbos Very Happy

Did some cleaning last night and this morning, and now I need to decide whether to spend the afternoon doing more cleaning or shopping. Then I still have work to do before work on Monday, and the month ends this week so there's some additional stuff that will need doing then. I'm thinking I'd like to finish pesach-cleaning all non-kitchen spaces today, which I could do in one big push, but then I'd have to squeeze shopping into some other day. The only shopping I have left is the Jewish stores, which will be equally crowded on Sunday and weekdays being the last week before Pesach, so it's really a toss-up and just a matter of whether I want to squeeze it into an evening after work/school (which might also mean taking two separate trips if we run out of time) or have a crazy long day today. I hate these kinds of decisions.

Sanguine

Sun, Mar 29 2015, 3:36 pm

amother wrote:

I'm pregnant and nauseous so can't get anything done! I'm just sitting in bed crying and have no clue how I'm going to finish the house. My husband and I both work full time up until erev pesach so the only time we have is today and nights. But today my husband had to go help his dad and nights I am too sick. Help!!!

I feel so bad for you(It's just so hard when you just have no energy to move). Is his your first child? Can you go to one of your parents (the whole thing)? If this is your first child you can do minimal minimal. Do they sell Pesach take out by you? Are you making a seder or going out? Your husband can clean the fridge and stove (forget the oven, you'd barely use it anyway). Take out minimal Pesach dishes (use paper). When I was pregnant we ate gefilte fish from a jar and cottage cheese for our Purim Seuda Very Happy

.

Can you hire someone to come work with your husband one night? Buy ready made food if you can. Please don't cry. I wish I could come help you. When your husband gets home you'll work out a plan and everything will be okay. Very Happy

seeker

Mon, Mar 30 2015, 1:09 am

Re-made the beds, washed the socks/undies/towels load. Pronounced the bedroom clean for Pesach, dealt with about half the stuff heaped on the chair (that which had been collected from "around" in order to vacuum). Did some truly unnecessary kitchen-stuff cleaning (unnecessary because the items I cleaned get put away and surely contained less than a kezayis of chometz, if any at all) because I had started without realizing how much energy it would take. Made and fed everyone supper. Did a preliminary vacuum of the living room (which is really the everything-but-the-bedroom room) including the chairs, and instructed DH not to feed anyone chometz outside the kitchen anymore. Briefly glanced through the linen/medicine/stuff closet - briefly because at the same time I read the OU list of things that don't need to be specially kosher for Pesach and that included just about everything in there. Removed Tums and toothpaste and put with the away-for-Pesach things.

Kids took FOREVER to fall asleep and in the process drained me of all remaining patience and energy. 2yo had a late nap but that's because she is sick and didn't sleep last night, so that does not excuse her for staying up past midnight chirping in my ear. DH didn't get home until 11:30 at which point I could finally retrieve my socks/undies/towels because the washing machines are not in our apartment and they weren't dry before I started trying to put the kids to bed. So now I have a new heap of stuff to deal with.

Meanwhile because the kids took so much doing after bedtime, I didn't even touch my work work until close to midnight, but by then my brain was so fried it is going ten times more slowly than it should and not going well at any rate. I am about to give up with the full acceptance that that means tomorrow will be wrecky, because tomorrow will be even more wrecky if I don't sleep, only it is already wrecked that way because it's already late for sleeping.

You can tell me again how I'd get more sleep if I didn't spend 8 minutes typing this on imamother but I'm frustrated and wiped out and need to vent. Everything is burning with exhaustion, my house and life still feel like a mess, and I am battling feelings of inferiority for being so messy and disorganized that it gets this bad in the first place. It seems like there are a trillion things left to do over the next 3 days and I need to do them with two little kids in tow because my childcare only covers exactly my working hours and nobody else wants them. And the weather is still cold which means everything is more of a pain - last year cleaning the car was a load of fun, the kids hung around outside and all enjoyed, this year it's COLD. Every errand is going to take five times as long because at each stop I'll have to get both kids out of their car seats, into their coats, through whatever I need to do which could really be done without them in half the time and noise, back out of the coats and into the car, and then someone's going to need a bathroom though they probably will fuss about using a public one. With food.

I'm sorry, I just need to kvetch sometimes. I actually usually LIKE Mondays, I like a fresh workweek, I try to come with new ideas, but right now I am so not in the mood. I want to take a vacation RIGHT NOW. And I'm not getting one, not now, not next week, possibly not ever. Sorry for being so crabby. I'm crabby and tense and stressed about a few other things too which I'm not sharing, so it all trickles through.