Cleaning for Pesach: is a snap! Kind of.It’s the time of year again when some people go apeshit in their attempts to clean all chametz from every last crevice of their homes. You can skip the spring cleaning in favor of a Passover vacation, or you can do the massive purge and give your home the sacred scrubbing it probably needs. If you do the latter, don't go overboard: There are some specific rules about what you need to do in order to fulfill your halachic obligations, and after that it’s just picking up and throwing out however much junk you want to get rid of. Here are some rules and tips:

• There are two requirements for cleaning: Biur chametz, which is the act of getting rid of the chametz, and bedikat chametz, destroying the chametz. The first one is easy. You can actually still have the chametz in your home as long as you consider it to be dust—valueless and without an owner. That said, it’s hard to rationalize Girl Scout cookies as valueless, no matter what you tell yourself. That's why the rabbis instituted bedikat chametz, which is much trickier. In addition to writing off chametz as dust, you also have to search out any chametz you can find, and destroy it.

• The top priority when cleaning for Pesach should be the kitchen. You should clean inside your fridge and freezer, give the stove top and oven a hardcore scrubbing if you don’t have a self-cleaning setting, and get into all of the crevices of your cabinets, pantries, and drawers.

• After the kitchen, the dining room and other eating areas are where you want to focus your energy. These are the places where you’re most likely to have crumbs of old food that’s still edible, and thus technically chametz.

• Chametz is a technical term for anything that has resulted from a grain fermenting. But we only have to get rid of edible chametz, or chametz that would count as food. A bagel crumb that has been sitting on your kitchen floor for a year doesn’t count as edible chametz because you wouldn’t consider it food. So technically, an old bagel crumb is no problem. (Don’t worry about the possibility of a baby eating that bagel crumb—just because a baby eats it doesn’t mean it’s food. Babies try to eat all kinds of things that aren’t really food. The bagel crumb still isn’t chametz). That said, why haven't you swept your floor in a year?

• There’s one other category of things that you don’t have to worry about. Anything a dog wouldn’t eat doesn’t have to be removed or destroyed. I don’t know why you’d want to keep it in your kitchen if a dog wouldn’t eat it, but I won’t judge.

• Unless You Tend To Eat On It: you don't have to clean the toilet. although it could use a good scrub...Either you’re going to get rid of as much chametz as possible, or you’re going to make sure that any chametz that might be around the house would be considered inedible. Even if you only give the kitchen corners a half hearted attack with some kind of cleaning solution, whatever chametz is in those corners will be tainted by the cleaning solution and is no longer edible, so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

• Though it’s important to be vigilant about cleaning for Pesach, you should be careful with cleaning solutions that could harm you or your family. Every year, Israeli hospitals have a sharp increase in cases of children being poisoned after being exposed to toxic chemicals while their families clean for Pesach. Read labels carefully, and keep the house well ventilated when using strong chemicals. Even better, use a non-toxic "green" product, such as Simple Green.

• Finally, relax! If you’re so stressed out by cleaning that you can’t enjoy the seders, you’re working way too hard. Pesach should be fun, not a yearly peak in blood pressure.

Burning chametz: Teaching kids to play with matches and fear carbs...It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I saw someone burn chametz before Passover. In my house growing up, my parents would just box up all the cookies and crackers and flour and other naughty carbohydrates, and stick them in the basement.

I now know that this wasn’t really kosher, but that’s the way it was. And after all, we weren’t really kosher either.

So it wasn’t until I was working for Hillel that I was exposed to the odd practice of running around with a feather and an envelope and then playing arsonist in the front yard.

Which I thought was pretty fun!

And it was that same year that I discovered the practice of selling chametz, which is, I think, totally ridiculous (in the same way I find the shabbes goy ridiculous, and the eruv. Letter of the law more than the spirit...) but if that’s your thing, go nuts.

In any case, it’s nice to know what you’re supposed to do… or at least, it’s nice to know what you’re okay with doing wrong…

So here, for your reading pleasure, Passover Cleaning Made Easy! And here, at another site, is How to Search for Chametz. In case you want to observe the holiday traditionally this year, but you aren’t sure where to begin.

Just remember…

The mitzvah of Pesach cleaning is to remove chametz from our homes -- not dust. You don't gain spiritual reward for staying up until midnight sweeping the corners of your ceiling. Instead …

Which is good to know.

I don’t know about you, but my house is a sty!