The post-Pesach wind-up and let-down

Remember all that time and effort spent getting the kitchen ready for Pesach? Well, once Pesach is over, it's time to change the kitchen back to everyday use. One could choose, of course, to keep the kitchen in Pesach mode for a while longer. But that would mean no cereal or bread or muffins or cookies or pasta or anything else that uses chametz. So, we bite the bullet and return to normalcy. Whatever that is.

That's the pile of empty boxes that used to contain our Pesach dishes. And here's the other side of the pile:

Yup, we unloaded all those boxes and washed everything just so that we could use the dishes, pots and pans, and utensils for 8 days. We packed up the meat dishes first:

Relatively uneventful, except that there were a few meat leftovers that had to be repackaged in plastic wrap or foil or a plastic bag -- things that could be discarded later rather than Pesach meat dishes.

Then the pareve dishes, since most of what we eat is dairy:

Most of our pareve stuff is either glass (like the wine glasses) or things that are used only for vegetables (like the food processor and salad spinner and juicer).

And finally, the dairy dishes, which form the bulk of our Pesach kitchen stuff:

We did most of the packing during the afternoon of the eighth day of Pesach. Anyone who wanted a snack ate leftovers off of paper plates. The paper towels used to line the cabinets and drawers were pulled up, as was the Contact paper that covered the counters.

The only good thing about packing up the kitchen eight days after setting it up for Pesach is that it generally takes much less time. And you can fudge a bit -- for example, the counters got uncovered in bits and pieces as we had time.

That's our regular dairy dish drainer sitting on top of the still-covered counter. And also a glimpse of the dishwasher, which decided to start leaking on the day we switched over to our Pesach kitchen. Still better than the stove crapping out on us like last year.

Now that we're back to our regular kitchen operations, it's time to start thinking about the next holiday -- Shavuot -- and how we get there by counting the omer. Next time.