Two Boxes at a Time

Day before Seder requires some pacing.  My big projects are two.  Clean the refrigerator and move the things we need for our Festival upstairs from the basement.  I also take a few things better removed from the kitchen downstairs, intending temporary storage there for a week that often extends much longer.

I got a big head start on the refrigerator this year.  Cleaning all three bins, fruit, a usually goopy vegetable bin, and a mostly tame cheese bin.  Beneath the produce bins, crud accumulates.  Much of the day before Seder cleansing involves removing that dried on coating, then some detergent.  This year I started well in advance, cleaning it with a combination scouring sponge and a floor sponge mop that now needs to be replaced.  That leaves me now with the shelves, four half-width variable shelves and a more elaborate and fragile full width lower unit, which I once shattered.  Then a detergent or Formula 409 sponging of the interior walls.  Returning items, separating what we can use on Pesach falls to my wife.

As I approach another birthday this Pesach, past the mandatory Social Security draw but not quite to the mandatory IRA withdrawal, I'm grateful for the ability to move all the boxes upstairs, though I have to pace myself two excursions at a time.  I like to do the heavy ones first, though not always practical as lighter items occupy space above the heavier ones.  The really heavy stuff has been retrieved but a fair amount of moderately heavy remains.  Two trips at a time, then let my smartwatch announce my pulse, then rest, then two more.  I try to do fleishig first as they have a more defined resting place in my dining room, but the effort of toting upstairs really has more importance than what the box contains.

Did today's scheduled treadmill at desired intensity, the project I am most likely to make excuses to defer, especially after lugging things up from the basement offers the illusion of exercise.  Get dressed, maybe get a bagel or something for a late morning snack, a couple more boxes before I go.  Night before Seder has been an eat out tradition as well, focus more of filling than elaborate.  Then formal search for Chametz with planted bread chunks after dark.

Not a recreation day, but one where chores all get done when properly paced.