Passover Cleaning Checklist

Everyone processes grief in their own way.  Fortunately, I tend to take on constructive or creative projects.  When my mom died, I started this blog.  When Papa Smurf died, I doubled down and blogged a lot, between bursts of purging excess from the house.  When Princess the cat died, I remodeled the living room into a dining room.  And now, with Molly gone and the house pet free for the first time since 1988, I decided to start Passover cleaning a month early.

For me and most Jewish housekeepers, the pre-Passover cleaning spree starts shortly after Purim.  The actual purpose is to rid the property of chometz, or leavening.  Many turn it into Spring Cleaning with a religious fervor.  I generally start with the non-food areas of the house and finish with the kitchen in the last week.  This year, I'm just spreading it out over two months instead of one and adding in fur removal.

My first task is always to take a duster and sweep all the ceiling edges and corners in the entire house.  The first year, there were quite a few cobwebs.  Now I usually find just a bit of extra dust and a couple of cobwebs.  20 minutes, once a year, and the ceilings and upper wall corners are clean.  It's a good way to ease into it.

After that, I tend to pick projects.  One year, I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed every non-carpeted floor.  Some of them really needed it.  I decided that I liked having that level of clean in the bathrooms and added that to my annual list.  This year, I want to get my office files under control and tidy up that guest room in general.  Pretty sure a lot of the papers can be shredded.  I also want to finish painting the inside of the kitchen cabinets.  I did the uppers last year, but never got around to the lowers.  And I'm going to be cleaning up fur for years.  When I did the sofas, I don't think all the fur in there was Molly's.  I still find orange fur sometimes when I discover a new crevice I've never cleaned, and Linus moved a decade ago.

My current list:

• Corner dusting
• Flat surface dusting
• Bathroom floors
• Paint remaining kitchen cabinets
• Office purge and reorganize
• Entry floor
• Rent a carpet cleaner
• Windows (in & out), mirrors, picture frames
• Scrub showers and tub
• Greenhouse window (in &out)
• Detail car
• Wash curtains and liners (replace if torn)
• Kitchen detail

I'm probably going to find more things to do as I go.  I'm not even listing my regular monthly and quarterly cleaning projects that are more involved than basic weekly cleaning and tidying up.

I tend to make up a calendar that has me do about an hour of cleaning a day, even on work days, so I don't have to do all of it on my days off.  I'm going to see how far I can get by Purim and only assign the last month.  For this blog, I'll go into the kitchen sub-list when I get to it, since it's at least as long as the list above.

I'm curious to see if I can go off at least one allergy medicine once the deep cleaning is done.  It doesn't mean I never want another pet.  I just want to see if I'm cleaning in a way that makes a difference.