The last few days before the start of Pesach are probably the busiest in our annual round. As I've mentioned before, we do not change over our kitchen or do any Pesach cooking until the very last minute. This year, the first seder was on a Monday night. We spent pretty much all day on Sunday cleaning the house, especially the kitchen. Sunday night we did the b'dikat chametz, the search for chametz, and on Monday morning we ate our donuts and burned our leftover chametz.
Also on Sunday we changed over to Pesach mode, which means we finished putting all of our regular dishes and utensils into temporary storage in the garage, brought in all of our Pesach stuff, rinsed or washed all the Pesach dishes and utensils, put the Pesach stuff into our cabinets (which had been lined -- we use paper towels, for ease of use and disposal afterwards), covered the counters, kashered the oven and other appliances as well as the kitchen sink, and .... oh, yeah, moved the remainder of the chametz-dik foods out of the house.
With everyone home, plus a non-Jewish friend who came over to help, multiple tasks were going on at the same time. The pantry shelves were lined with paper towels and we moved some of our Pesach purchases onto the shelves:
At the same time, we were cleaning the kitchen thoroughly and packing up any dishes, utensils, kitchen linens, pots and pans, storage containers, etc., etc., etc., and so and and so forth that were still lying about. And someone else was dusting and vacuuming and mopping and doing some general cleaning.
The refrigerator shelves had to be cleared off (still some chametz there), washed, rinsed with boiling water, and replaced. One of the reasons that we bought a refrigerator with glass shelves is that they are easy to kasher for Pesach -- no need to line them, as some do with wire shelves.
Uh-oh. Still some bread and soda and other stuff to get rid of. Fortunately, we own a second refrigerator, which is very handy at this time of year. We clean it and line the shelves, then store perishable Pesach supplies there until we switch over the kitchen. Once the main fridge is ready for Pesach, we use a shelf or two in the second refrigerator to store any perishable foods that we will use again after Pesach (e.g., our Brita pitchers, open juice or margarine).
Cleaning the refrigerator is always fun because, no matter what we think, there is always a collection of crumbs at the bottom. I have no idea how they get there -- it's not like we leave loose baked goods in the fridge. But whatever.
All clean and ready to go:
I always love seeing my refrigerator like this, right at the beginning of Pesach. Once the cooking starts, this refrigerator will never be this empty again -- until next year.
The refrigerator freezer compartment also needs some special cleaning, even though everything is cold cold cold. Ice cream and leftover ice cream pie need to be consumed and whatever spilled on the bottom of the freezer has to be cleaned up. (Funny thing about that piece of ice cream pie. We forgot to eat it and then found it in the freezer a few hours before the first seder, past the time at which our sale of chametz had taken effect. It was "dust of the earth" and I had to throw it away, even though I felt a few pangs of regret.)
We also had to cover the kitchen counters. We generally use
Contact paper. Sometimes we just tape the Contact paper down, but other years (including this one), we peel off the backing and apply the Contact paper directly to the counter surfaces.
Because we have at least one big meal each year during Pesach that includes meat, we have more meat dishes, pot and pans, and utensils for Pesach than we do for daily use. This largesse takes up more room, therefore we labeled the cabinets and drawers in order to lessen confusion.
As for the stove and oven, dishwasher, microwave, and sinks -- opinions on how to kasher these items vary. This is the sort of thing you should consult your local halachic authority (e.g., rabbi) about.
Once everything was completed -- whew! -- we could start preparing food for our sedarim.
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