Finally b''H, the Pesach cleaning was done in time. At the limit of time, but still ready for the intensive cooking I plan to start tomorrow early in the morning. I must confess that this year I was incredibly late, as one week before the hag, I was still procrastinating, thinking about how can I start the cleaning and the preparations. Right now, I keep being late, with the menu still unclear, as unclear is the place where we will spend the second seder.
Despite all the shortcoming, I dare to think about the lessons learned that hope to respect carefully the next year. The most important are:
- Start planning the cleaning as soon as possible. After Purim, as I always used to do. Start little by little, one corner at a time, and be sure that you move fast enough to be ready at least 5 days before Pesach. It is such a good feeling to know that you still can rest and have the mind clear for preparing the menu and the schedule for chol hamoed.
- Involve your family: my big mistake this year is that I wanted to do almost everything by my own. When they saw that I am getting too far, they decided to help and, honestly, they saved me at least one day when felt too tired to continue doing at the same time: kashering, washing loads of clothes, selecting the things we don't need and putting in order those that we want to keep.
- Relax from time to time, or while doing the boring cleaning: listen to some shiurim - as usual, I used the resources from YUTorah and WebYeshiva, catching up with the learning - or some Pesach music. Thus, one can already enter the feeling of the holidays and the hard cleaning gets a different perspective.
- Pesach means more than cleaning. It means a return to humility, to modesty and thoughts about what really matters in life. For the next days, we are trying to nurture our spiritual side. What we build during the next days should be the basis for the rest of the year. I wish the next year cleaning will be easier also because I would think twice before bringing at home or buying things that I actually don't need.
It's all for now. Enough talking and thinking, time to relax for a little bit before a long cooking marathon tomorrow!
Hag kosher v'sameah!
No comments:
Post a Comment