I went to a great class yesterday that totally affirmed my attitude toward Pesach cleaning (viz., look for and remove chametz without bothering about dusting the house or folding clothing).
Rabbi Barzilai went through all three Torah-level prohibitions of chametz on Pesach (don't own edible chametz of the size of an olive, don't have edible chametz the size of an olive [that belongs to a Jew] in your house, and don't eat chametz). He explained absolutely everything necessary to do as a result (to wit, verbally relinquish claim to any chametz before Pesach and don't eat chametz on Pesach). Then he explained the Rabbinic requirements regarding chametz on Pesach (thoroughly search your house for edible chametz the night before Pesach) and customs that are ancient enough to be binding (if you regularly stick dough to your walls, scrape off the dough [in ancient times, people used water and flour as glue/spackle] and sweep your floors on the night before Pesach). Rabbi Barzilai also mentioned a nice stringency that's brought down by the Rema: in addition to sweeping your floors for Pesach, wash your floors, as well. THAT'S IT.
Rabbi Barzilai didn't even bother ranting about not cleaning the dust from your dresser drawers; he saved his rant for getting all of the crumbs out of the refrigerator gasket. ("If you want to be stringent, shpritz some cleanser in the gasket so the crumbs aren't edible! If you want to symbolically remove your bad character traits by removing tiny crumbs from your house, that's fine, but don't get so focused on removing tiny crumbs that you lose your temper. Everybody. Just. Relax.")
So that was a nice affirmation that my perfect calm about Pesach "cleaning" is justified, and the (thorough) visual inspection that we've almost completed in the bedrooms/upstairs bathrooms really does suffice. (We were already planning to actually sweep the floors up there closer to Pesach.) I'll finish looking for liquid ethanol in the bathroom (helloooooo liquid hand sanitizer/perfumes) and either I or Husbinator will go through BSM's room looking for hidden pretzels, and then we're done with half of the house, leaving us with two full weeks to clean the kitchen, dining room, and computer room downstairs. There's really nothing to stress out about.
Which is why last night I dreamed that it was 4 am before Pesach and we hadn't even started kashering the kitchen and we hadn't done any grocery shopping for Pesach, either, let alone cooking, and the car's power steering broke and BSM wouldn't fall asleep and---
