Of course, there are difficulties in taking it down too. Taking down a sukkah is not just about renting a wrecking ball, because you have to be able to put it up again next year with a minimum amount of trips to Home Depot. It’s harder than people make it out to be. You have to make a note of where each panel goes, and which side is up, and which side goes inside the sukkah. (Some people accomplish this by leaving the decorations glued to the walls. Unfortunately, yours fell down the first time it drizzled.) And there’s exactly one way it fits in the garage – in a specific order with the schach on top of the boards, even though you take the schach down before you take down the boards. You can’t really do it the other way. And then there’s the sukkah carpet, which you thought was a great idea, until it drizzled, and ever since then, it was squish squish squish, and nothing is drying on the floor of the sukkah when your schach offers more shade than sun.
In general, though, the recommended time to take down your sukkah is Isru Chag. If you didn’t do it on Isru Chag, then the best time is Isru Chag of Pesach.
When I was growing up, I’d never heard of Isru Chag. The rebbeim definitely didn’t take time out of their barely-existent Yom Tov teaching time to educate us about the day after Yom Tov. In general, you just took down your sukkah on a Sunday, sometime before it got too cold. What’s Isru Chag? You don’t have time to stay home for Isru Chag. You used up all your vacation days for the entire year on this one month of Yom Tov. What do they need that extra day for?
Taking down the sukkah. And in the case of Pesach, cleaning up the house from Pesach, which, considering how much cleaning you did to get ready for it, left your house a disaster of matzah crumbs and tin foil. (“Why on earth did we tin-foil the microwave?”) And in the case of Shavuos, it’s to deal with any residual lactose intolerance before returning to the office.
Or you can get some bochurim to take down your sukkah. Unfortunately, even though there are all these bochur services before Yom Tov – car cleaning, sukkah building, flower arranging – there are none afterward. Aren’t they taught about Isru Chag?
So my advice is that you put up a sign in your local yeshiva that looks like a wedding invitation, but actually says, in Hebrew words that no one reads, that they’re invited to take down the sukkah of
You
and
Your Spouse
Mazal Tov!
Then, toward the bottom of the invitation, write “Simchas chosson v’kallah,” and leave a pan of kugel in the sukkah.
Have a question for “You’re Asking Me?” I’ll get to it after I take down my sukkah.