Pesach cleaning…
How long do you spend preparing for Pesach?
See Rav Aviner, who says less than a day. And his approach generally is what I do follow. The important point is "dirt is not chametz." Random crumbs hidden away where they will not get into your food are not a source of great concern. I taught this lesson to my kids the other day — by studying the mishnah in Pesachim that tells us we don't have to worry about weasels dragging chametz into your house after you cleaned…because if we worried about that "ain sof l'dvar," there is no end to it.
Some people go completely nuts and spend weeks preparing. Rav Aviner says the week before Pesach is not the time to go nuts with spring cleaning; better to take the kids on a tiyul and arrive at Pesach in the right spiritual frame of mind.
Rabbi David Hartman said his Pesach preparations take about half an hour, and include have good kavanah at the "bitul chametz," nullification of chametz blessing. I don't think I'm quite ready to go that far…but one day is certainly sufficient!
Chag kasher v'sameach
PS. While we are talking about Pesach, another thing that can make Passover much easier is to follow Rav Golinkin's teshuva about eating kitniyot:
See http://www.responsafortoday.com/engsums/3_4.htm for the English summary.
http://www.responsafortoday.com/vol3/4.pdf
See http://www.forward.com/articles/104483/ for an interesting article about the "chametz wars" in Israel.
