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| Pesach Without Pressure |

Pesach Without Pressure: Laya Appelbaum

 

There are many ways to make Pesach. None of them have to involve tears, extreme fatigue, or a week of pizza bagels. In this column we’ll meet women with vastly different methods, but who all share the goal of reaching Pesach calmly and happily.

Name: Laya Appelbaum*
From: Cleveland, OH
Been making Pesach for: 34 years
Motto: Windex — it’s all about happy Jews and Windex.

 

Basic Approach

Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg a”h gave a yearly shiur about Pesach cleaning that became very famous;  I used to go listen to it every year when we lived in Eretz Yisrael. His philosophy was that you could do all of your Pesach cleaning in a few hours. The stuff people make themselves crazy with has nothing to do with Pesach! You can close things off, you don’t have to clean your entire house — why make yourself crazy right before Pesach, when you’ll become resentful and fall asleep at the Seder?

I’d say we clean the house in two to three hours on the day of bedikas chometz. This sounds foreign, maybe even irresponsible, but we want to enjoy Yom Tov. We’re coming out of shi’abud Mitzrayim, we should love Pesach — and my kids do.

We have a large family, ka”h, and the kids are all very positive about Yiddishkeit and very shtark. My older kids come for Yom Tov, and I want us all to enjoy Pesach together and not be stressed out! Just take a Windex, shpritz it, it’s going to be fine. Give us a couple hours… it’ll be good.

Going gluten-free

A month before Pesach I switch to kitniyos snacks for the kids — rice cakes, bamba…. There’s a lot of nosh that’s kitniyos! This way, I can assume that any crumbs I later find on the floor or in toys are kitniyos. The toys that we will play with on Pesach I run through the washing machine, in a mesh bag or a pillowcase. Some years I had the kids clean them in the bathtub with toothbrushes. Some years my kids had more toys, some years less toys.

I have my regular cleaning help, so at around the same time, we pull out the couches and clean behind them to get rid of the initial dirt. I don’t clean the bedrooms for Pesach — I don’t allow food there, so my regular weekly cleanup is enough. When the kids were little I had them dump out their drawers but I didn’t do it right before Pesach, I did it a month before when we switched clothing for the new season. Again, if I find crumbs later, I know it must be kitniyos since we made that switch. My kids clean out the pockets of their clothing and anything we don’t have time to clean I just throw into the washing machine — whatever goes through a wash is not ra’uy l’achilas kelev.

In the living room and dining room, I spray the chairs with Windex. When the cleaning lady comes, she does the same sweep and mop as she always does. We use a cleanser that will ensure that anything that comes into contact with it will no longer be ra’uy l’achilas kelev. After Purim we clean the couches (just as I do every couple of months). As we get closer to Pesach, I don’t let my kids run around with challah, and we eat mostly gluten-free meals.

When it comes to the kitchen, some years I clean the cabinets, some years I tape them off and just keep everything on the counters. But when I clean a cabinet, it doesn’t take any time — it’s not like we live in total squalor the rest of the year! I just empty the cabinet, put everything in a box, then take some Windex and wipe it down.

 

Excerpted from Mishpacha Magazine. To view full version, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE or LOG IN.

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