Pesach countdown -- 4 Days to Go, Part I

I really meant to share this sooner, but things always seem to intervene. We do have an overall plan for Pesach preparation. We got this calendar for Pesach prep years ago and refer to it every year even though we don't follow it exactly.

If you've been paying attention to this blog, you'll see that we have more-or-less followed the general plan even though the family is reduced in size (at least temporarily) and the "children" are all adults now.

Calendar for Pesach Preparation

We originally got this calendar from the school our daughter attended for Kindergarten. I'll present it first pretty much as we received it, then share my comments about this schedule.

Four Weeks Before:

--Do not buy or open new items like pickles, jams, flour, etc.
--Use up old stocks, especially refrigerated items.
--Look for and shop for Pesach staples that run out quickly, e.g., spices, ketchup, mayonnaise, preserves, oil, macaroons, grape juice, etc.
--Plan menus and shopping lists.

Three Weeks Before:

Order meat, wine, and any special candies.
Begin spring cleaning, starting with areas farthest from the kitchen, then ask family members not to take food into these rooms.

Two Weeks Before:

--Clean living room and dining room areas, then don't eat in them.
--Buy any dairy products that require certification and store them in the refrigerator in separate wrappers clearly marked for Pesach.
--Buy the rest of the Pesach supplies.
--Arrange to sell chametz.

Last Week:

The following schedule must be adjusted for Shabbat, with the work scheduled for the days before Shabbat being done one day earlier. B'dikat chametz is performed on the evening before the first seder.

Day 6:
Finish cleaning rest of house; prepare dishwasher.
Day 5:
Clean kitchen and change dishes.
Day 4:
Shop for fresh food - fruits, vegetables, fish, etc.
Day 3:
Cook for seder - baking, salads, dressings, etc.
Day 2:
Cook for seder - soup, meats, side dishes except last minute vegetables.
Perform B'dikat Chametz (the search for chametz) in the evening.
Day 1:
Eat no real matzah before the seder.
Burn chametz before noon.
Set table.
Last minute cooking.
Seder!

Our Reaction to This Schedule and How We Adapt It

Four weeks before, we start looking at what we have on our shelves. We do our best to use up everything we can before Pesach so that we don't have chametz in the house. We usually go through all our food storage areas and  prepare an inventory of food, which we then divide into something like the following categories:

-- Food to use up, discard, or give away.

-- Unopened food we won't use and can donate to a food pantry.

-- Unopened food that we will sell to a non-Jew for the duration of Pesach.

We plan our meals between Purim and Pesach as carefully as we can to use up as much of what we already have as possible. If it looks like we're going to end up with unopened packages of things like cereal, pasta, flour, we set those items aside for Project Mazon, which distributes the items to food pantries in our area. Since we often buy in bulk, we always end up with a certain amount of food (often frozen) that it would be a significant financial loss to replace. This food we sell to a non-Jew through our rabbi.

These days there are a plethora of kosher-for-Passover items available that replicate virtually everything one eats during the year. We don't buy these, as a rule, so shopping for hard-to-find items like kosher-for-Passover noodles or muffin mixes rarely enters the picture for us.  We do start buying kosher-for-Passover foods as much as a month before Pesach, mainly because we like to spread out the economic impact of changing all the food in the house as much as possible.

Three weeks before we do start a general scrubbing and cleaning throughout the house. We discourage everyone from carrying food out of the kitchen/dining area, but it is not yet forbidden. We need to do our final Pesach cleaning a little closer to the event because nothing will stay clean in our house for more than a day or so.

Our main activity at this point is determining what we're going to eat, who we're going to eat with, and what we want to do at the seder.

Two weeks before we start working toward the kitchen. The bedrooms are ruthlessly scrubbed, vacuumed, swept, polished, dusted. As we finish each room, we post a sign on the door so that we'll remember not to take in food.

The last week before Pesach we finish our shopping and cleaning. The areas we use most are left until the day public areas of the house, clearing out all the cabinets, and finishing our shopping. Any non-Pesachdik food in the house that has not been sold will be moved out to garage.

We will search the house for chametz sometime after it becomes dark, then start washing and putting away our Pesach dishes. We traditionally eat a very chametz-dik breakfast on the day of the first seder. If we're lucky, the weather is nice enough to have this meal outdoors. Afterwards, we clean up and burn the leftovers as well as the chametz we found on our search the night before.

Then we go in, finish changing the kitchen if necessary, pause to catch our breaths, and start cooking like mad.

What Other People Do to Prepare for Pesach

Many people we know make a corner of their kitchen kosher for Passover and prepare foods in advance. We don't do this for two reasons - I could never figure out just how to do this, and we like the idea of commemorating our Exodus from Egypt by our haste in having to prepare everything on the last day.