In the blink of an eye, another year has gone by and the greatest and most formidable of Jewish holidays -- Passover, the festival of freedom -- which spans an entire month (two weeks before, two weeks after, and one day of a completely chaotic seder) has arrived. As it comes flying through our window it brings with it a deluge of cleaning products, waiting in every dark corner of the house. My mother, known for her fondness for all different cleaning products, has already publicly (meaning to me and my brother) declared that the landfill in your rooms needs to be cleaned up. What is the meaning of this? What is this filth- In response, my sister went back to the army for two weeks, where, so she says, her drill sergeant is less meticulous than our mother. Parting words that touched our hearts, like Oh, that girls closet or How can you set foot in there? You cant even see the floor! accompanied the preparation ceremony for the big spring cleaning, which, at our house, always begins three weeks before the Haggadah is read. My mother made it very clear this year that she would not tolerate any junk in these tiny rooms that are full to the brim anyway. I started out with my closet, thinking that within 30 minutes I would be done and on to the bookcase -- which has been waiting for this cleaning since the day it was purchased in 1998 and hasnt even been wiped for dust, so the rumor has it in my family. Three or so hours later, I had formed a respectable pile of clothes that had outlived their purpose, ready for the next phase of being donated to some charity. The pile included a strappy blue dress from when I was a soldier (practically new -- only 10 years old), several sweaters that had reverted to their original forms of balls of yarn and several pairs of pants that had been reclaimed by their forefathers, comfortably rubbing their white beards on my bed. Delighted with my success in the closet task, I placed the clothes in the designated donations area (to be referred to from this point forth as the pile) ready to return to the battlefield and tackle the bookcase. An alarmed shriek, however, was soon to follow: What? Youre getting rid of the blue dress? And this beautiful sweater? Its practically new. Isnt it a shame- I thought you wanted me to organize my closet. I dont wear these clothes anymore. I didnt think you would throw away new clothes, my mother complained, as I tossed out a stack of her beloved old crossword puzzles. The next stage was the storage cabinet. Among the items I found there: a broken plastic desk lamp, the eighth volume of the Aviv Encyclopedia from the Eshkolot Elementary School (1991) and an ultraviolet lamp (which was a huge hit during the summer of 1997 when all my classmates hung psychedelic decorations on their bedroom walls, much to the chagrin of Hebrew mothers everywhere). The massive pile also included stacks of recyclable paper, undecipherable bank statements and various nondescript knickknacks with no clear purpose. After five hours of fighting, exhausted and covered in dust, my army of dusting cloths and I emerged from the storage cabinet ready to rest on our laurels. But then, a loud scream pierced the festive spring holiday sky: Dear God! Youre throwing THAT away? Where will we put it? It wont fit in the garbage! Why dump everything? Who throws away a desk lamp- My mother was screaming bloody murder. Its an ultraviolet lamp. I bought it in eighth grade. So? Isnt it a shame? Its like new! What is an ultraviolet lamp, anyway? What do you do with it- At this point we decided to take a break for a few days, to prepare for stage two: scrubbing down the living room and restoring all the junk we found in stage one back to where it came from. There are still three weeks before the seder, but in the meantime, Im getting a pretty accurate sense of the 10 plagues.