By Mordechai Schmutter

There are two types of families when it comes to making Shabbos: Those who are ready by chatzos on Friday and those where the husband is getting into the shower as his wife lights candles. There’s no one in between. It doesn’t matter whether Shabbos starts late or early. And neither of these groups will ever consider doing it the other way. The first group enjoys the lack of last-minute panic with which the second group races into Shabbos before finally catching their breath sometime in the middle of the rav’s Friday night derashah, and the second group enjoys that their Shabbos food is a lot fresher.

But no matter what, both groups want to do their prep as efficiently and in as little time as possible to make their various deadlines, and as someone who is always up against deadlines, here are some tips to keep you organized.

You can guess which group I’m in.

  • Instead of sitting down to any “meals” on Friday, just make sure to taste absolutely everything you make or buy, only stopping when you’re at the point where you’re not sure if there will be enough for the seudah.
  • You should look up what time candle-lighting is no less than five times over the course of Friday—specifically every time someone else in your family asks you. If you don’t have time for this, set the oven timer for whatever time Shabbos starts so you can tell at a glance whether it’s time to panic yet.
  • No matter how many times you’ve made Shabbos, you should be awful at estimating exactly how much food you need, and make enough food to feed your entire block. You should then spend the rest of Shabbos trying to get people from your block to come in and eat some of it.
  • Make sure to fill the whole entire hot water urn so the family can have their maybe two cups of coffee.
  • Your cholent is not a weekly science experiment. Especially if you’re having guests. “You know what we put in the cholent this week? We put in orange juice, we put in mayonnaise…” What are you doing? Think about the best cholent you’ve ever had in your life, such as the one made by the rebbetzin of your grandparents’ shul. Do you think your grandmother’s rebbetzin put mayonnaise in the cholent? No! She put in actual kishkas, though.
  • No matter how many times you wash your blueberries, every blueberry you have ever eaten has been dropped out of the fridge in a container that burst open when it hit the floor and somebody yelled, “Noooo!” and tried to get them all back into the container before someone else walked into the room.
  • Don’t forget to buy food for Shalosh Seudos. It doesn’t just have to be hard-boiled eggs and leftover gefilte fish.
  • When you’re salting a piece of fish before putting it in the oven, don’t bother carefully sprinkling every inch evenly. Just do it at random and hope the Ribbono shel Olam guides the salt to the correct parts of the fish, or that someone puts the entire piece of fish in his mouth at once.
  • Make sure to touch the sides of the crock pot about 7–8 times over the course of the day to be sure it’s on.
  • The shower roster should be as follows: Most of the day no one should want to go in the shower, despite how many times the woman of the house brings this up. And then about 45 minutes before Shabbos, everyone should want to go in at once. Just as the person in the kitchen is washing dishes.
  • Whoever showers last has to be in charge of remembering not to turn off the bathroom light afterward.
  • If you’re having guests, then while you’re going all out to impress your guests with the food you’re making, make sure to go out a little bit with the drinks too, instead of proudly announcing, after the meal starts, “We all just drink seltzer here!” Or making your guest go explore your fridge. If this is where you draw the line for some reason, then at least maybe when your guests ask what they should bring, instead of saying, “Just bring yourselves,” you can suggest they bring something to drink.
  • I find that if you wrap one challah in foil and put it in the hot oven right before you light candles, you will have nice, warm challah that you will forget to take out before Kiddush and washing almost 100% of the time.
  • Don’t forget to prepare tea essence for Shabbos. This is very important. It doesn’t matter if no one likes tea. What if someone comes who does? Or what if a guest asks if you have anything to drink besides tepid water? You can say, “I have tepid water with three teabags in it!”
  • There is a minhag to have a child cut toilet paper before Shabbos. It doesn’t matter how many boxes of tissues you have in the house. Part of this might be about giving your kids jobs they can’t possibly mess up to get them out of your hair. (“Hey, you like ripping things?” “Do I!?”)
  • Once you’re tearing things, make sure to tear foil before Shabbos as well, because the pre-torn foil that you’ve had in your house for the past 20 years does not cover a 9×13 pan. Alternatively, maybe you can reuse the 7-foot sheet of foil your child used to wrap the challah.
  • If you have kids, you should also be tearing paper towels.
  • Don’t forget to turn on your Shabbos lamp, unless you still haven’t turned it off from last week.
  • Try to remember to pick up your clothes from the cleaners sometime before you get out of the shower. Perhaps while you’re in the shower, I guess.
  • If someone is mopping the floor and you need to get across, you should take giant steps and walk on the sides of your feet as slowly and deliberately as you can and be in their way as long as possible to show them how sorry you are.
  • A not-so-great way to save time when polishing your shoes and your silver is to do them at once.
  • If you’re having guests, no matter what type they are, make sure to make up the guest beds for them. Yes, guests are always offering to help, so you might figure why not start them off right away with their own beds? But this way they don’t have to go searching for a blanket after you’ve gone to sleep. And end up using the Shabbos tablecloth.
  • Don’t forget to set the air conditioners or heater for Shabbos. You can base what you do on what the forecast says, or you can take a wild stab at it. You’ll be off about 50% of the time either way.
  • Don’t forget before Shabbos to take all the muktzah items out of your pockets and put them in a drawer. And then change your pants.
  • Why would you have muktzah items in your Shabbos pockets? (“Oh, that’s where my license has been!”)
  • Don’t forget to call your relatives on Friday. Erev Shabbos is a great time to talk to relatives on the phone, because if someone wants to end the call, they can just say, for example, “I have to go; the guests just showed up with raw chicken,” and no one will question it.
  • Every time my wife makes soup on a Thursday night, she runs off to bed and I have to figure out how to get a huge soup pot into the fridge among all the stuff I bought for Shabbos that we haven’t made yet. If you make your soup as late as possible on Friday, you don’t have to put the entire thing in the fridge before anyone even eats it.
  • Likewise, if you ask your children to shower early enough in the day, they will come down afterward in a second set of weekday clothes and you’ll have to bug them later in the day to change yet again. So you can choose how many fights you want to have.
  • If you only have one light-switch cover, use it to cover the one in the bathroom.
  • People are very good about putting away all their muktzah grown-up toys, but you should also make sure to put away all your muktzah children’s toys, especially if you’re going to have guests and it is not obviously a muktzah toy and your guest will crouch down and say to his kid, “You can play with this!” and then accidentally turn it on.
  • Some people swear by the method of making a month’s worth of each Shabbos dish to freeze for the coming weeks. These people are fortunate to have children who will not look at the food at the Shabbos seudah and say, “Again?!” And also freezers that will somehow close with all that food in it so that every Shabbos is not all about freezer burn.
  • A lot of these guides say, “Make sure to set up your candlesticks,” but I find that that’s the one thing that you won’t suddenly realize you’ve forgotten after you’ve lit candles. We have never once woken up on a Friday night and sat bolt upright in bed: “Candlesticks!” n

 

Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.

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