I find that when I’m in cleaning mode, there are certain messes I don’t even see. They’re just a part of my house now.
I see it in other people’s houses though. Those same things. Everyone who comes into your house sees them but you. These things kind of get a pass every time you clean, but I would say that once a year you should slow down a bit and think about them.
Not now, of course. Do a separate cleaning after Pesach to get to them. We don’t even know why we’re running this article now, except that this is when we’re thinking of it.
Or, I mean, once you’re cleaning anyway, it is kind of the best time to get rid of things, sholom-bayis-wise.
I. The stuff on the stairs
These are the things you put on the stairs to go up or down, “the next time I take the stairs.”
Or other people can do it. They can tell – if it’s on the top half of the stairs, it’s meant to go down, and if it’s on the bottom half, it’s meant to go up. You can sometimes move the item up by one stair, and then it’s basically where it needs to go. But you don’t. You don’t see it anymore.
You don’t even see it when you clean. When you vacuum the stairs, you move the items to another step, you clean under them, and you move them back to the original step. Why move it back? Just move it up one step every time you clean!
Occasionally you’ll see it, but not while you’re going up the stairs. You might eventually get tired and throw it up the stairs and watch it bounce back down at you.
“It doesn’t want to go up.”
Shoes, specifically.
And if you want to throw something down, you do that too – usually damp bath mats that have to go to the laundry. Basically, anyone hanging out on the stairs is eventually going to get hit with something. Usually a garbage bag.
II. The things on the bookshelves
I hate when people store things in front of the seforim. The seforim shelf is supposed to look nice, and instead it’s just stuff.
For example, right now we have several half-drunk water bottles that if I ask around belong to no one, glasses-cleaning cloths, a bottle of honey that our oldest son brought home from his friend’s farm six months ago and we think he drank straight from the bottle, old esrogim, a gragger our 13-year-old made in kindergarten, all the pieces of paper that he comes home with in his pockets folded a million times about various learning incentive programs, a sukkah decoration that one of our kids made that is too nice to throw out but not waterproof enough for an actual sukkah, and game pieces we found on the floor after we’d put away the games. And all this stuff makes it harder to dust the shelves, which is bad because for some reason seforim give off an incredible amount of dust.
III. The front of the fridge
My wife’s a big believer in hanging things on the fridge. We hang so many things that we had to get a second fridge. My wife thinks we got it because we need more food, but that’s just a nice side benefit. Also, our front door is magnetic, which is something our kids discovered when they were little. They used to play on it with their ABC magnets, and when someone knocked, they would run away crying. So we have three places to hang things. And we use all of them.
We don’t use our basement freezer. Yet.
A lot of the space is used for invitations. Invitations used to come down eventually. It used to be that when we went to the chasunah, we would take the invitation, bring it into the car, and put the address into the GPS. Nowadays, our GPS is our phones. We walk over to the fridge, type in the address, and walk away. Even if we’d take the invitations down, the ones for the weddings we don’t go to would stay up.
And then we have candle-lighting magnets. Not even all from this year. They send you the new one a few weeks early, and you’re like, “We still have a few weeks left on the old one!” And you hang both. The proof you never look at them is the fact that they’re still up.
Mostly, we look at the shul schedules. We have schedules up for every shul in a 15-minute radius. We also have various magnetic clips that can’t actually bear any weight; you put something in them and they slide down. We also have any kind of magnetic business card anyone ever gave us, even if it’s for a business we’ll never call. We have a picture of Reb Shayele Kerestirer, which we’re never going to take down, because even if we don’t think we have mice, we never really know. But that picture isn’t really taking up valuable real estate -- it’s actually slid down to the bottom of our front door, where the mice can see it.
We also have an Eruv Tavshilin magnet hanging up that we don’t necessarily remember to use because it’s become part of the scenery, but we don’t know where else we can store it because it’s magnetic.
Come to think of it, there is almost nothing I mentioned here that a non-Jew would have hanging on their fridge. Unless they do church schedules of all the walkable churches in town in case they have Sunday guests. Or they hang pictures of the Pied Piper or something. I guess this is why non-Jews seem to have only one fridge.
IV. The spice cabinet
We’re not throwing out spices. People used to discover new countries for this stuff. Risk their lives to go around the world to India just for spices. They wanted curry, but they ended up in America, so the spices they came home with were more like ketchup.
You buy all these spices because you need them for one recipe you found, but you never quite figure out how to use them outside of that recipe, because people don’t like spices they’re not used to, and the spices fall into disuse at the back of the cabinet, coming out only to fall into the things you’re making.
For example, we have two containers of cloves. I don’t know why. We already have cloves in our breakfront for besamim, and I don’t know how to tell when those go bad. Do they start to smell? Bad, I mean? I check them every week. Do they run out of smell? And do people actually use them in food? Is the food even kosher? Do non-Jews buy cloves? Why?
I also bought allspice and have never once used it. What do I do with allspice? It can’t literally be ALL the spices, right? Can I just put it in a recipe instead of all the spices?
I also have a pickling spice that I used once, and it made the worst pickles I’ve ever had.
I have mustard powder that I don’t know how or when to use.
There should just be a spice gemach.
V. Things to go outside
This is the biggest offender. We have a massive display of things that have to go out of the house, though few of them actually make it. This includes things that have to go out to the car, such as cloth shopping bags and the new insurance card, which lives in our house for the first three months of every term.
It also includes all the things we have to give to other people. Our Shabbos guests leave our house, and we’re like, “Oh, we were supposed to give them this thing they left here last time! We forgot the entire Shabbos!” And then we send it up with somebody else, which we literally could have done the entire time.
We also have things that need to go back to stores. Every time one of us goes to those stores, the other one will text them, “You forgot the thing,” and then the other will say, “Oh.” Sometimes by the time we get it together, it’s too late to return it to the store, so my wife says, “Okay, so we’ll give it to a gemach.” That takes even longer to go out.
And then we have keilim that need to go to the mikvah. That’s when we say, “We need a new giant fork! What happened to our old giant fork?” so we buy a new fork, and it lives near the front door until one day we say, “We need a new giant fork.” “Didn’t I buy one? I must not have.” And then you buy another one and put it near the front door and go, “Hey, there’s already one here!”
All these are things you’re blind to, but they’re the first things that guests see when they come in the house. Though maybe not, because if they were, you’d think the guest wouldn’t leave without them.
So maybe we’re okay.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
