No Spring Cleaning

It’s Passover season! I mean, seriously Passover season. Not Passover is in 3 months season. But, Passover is really close season. HalleluYah! The new moon has come and we have less than 2 weeks. Passover has been on our mind for a couple of months. But, now we’re in the serious preparation phase. 

Since I’ve been blessed to celebrate Yah’s appointed times all my life, this will be my 49^th Passover. We have been rehearsing this for a long time now.  And, over the years, we have done many different things. There were many years where we spent hours and days cleaning our house - Spring cleaning to remove the leaven.  It was a tradition of the church we grew up in. People even cleaned their windows and such preparing for Passover. Other than the natural yeast that is in the air, I’m not sure how much leaven I will find on the windows. I've even cleaned out my linen closets in preparation, but I’m pretty sure no one eats in the linen closet. At least I've never found any leaven in there.

So, we searched the scriptures for instruction on Passover preparation. There isn't a lot of instruction on preparing. Exodus 12:15 says: “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses.” It doesn't say “you shall begin cleaning your house for weeks in advance to make sure every last crumb of leaven has been removed.” It doesn't say, “Clean all your walls and windows so the naturally occurring yeast from the air is disposed of.” Especially since it will come right back.

I've learned a couple of things about preparing for Passover. One is that, no matter how much I clean, I always forget something. It might be that rogue chunk of someone’s leftover toast that was hidden behind the school room organizer. Or it might be that box of leavened something or other that I somehow overlooked and it is right in front of my face. It might be that thing that you never would have guessed in a million years was leavened. I mean, Grape Nuts are way too rock hard to be leavened, right? Wrong. Or, it might be that we forgot to empty the vacuum cleaner bag. Or, maybe the bag of yeast in the freezer.

So, we use a different technique now. A couple of weeks before Passover, I go through our food and set aside leavened foods. I make a list of leavened foods that are in the refrigerator and freezer so we can make sure to use them, or throw them away when the time comes. Then, that’s it, until a day or two before Passover. At that point, we make sure every room has been swept. We don’t really eat much food upstairs, so this can be done a couple of days ahead of time. Then, the day of Passover, we make sure the downstairs floors, especially the kitchen/dining area are swept well. And, just before Passover, we throw away our leavened food. That’s it. Passover cleaning in a nutshell. That means the weeks before Passover I can focus on spiritual things instead of being distracted by physical things.