Like most kids, my kids bring home more candy from trick-or-treating than they can possibly eat. In the past, I’ve struggled with how to handle this problem, since half of me thinks Hallowe’en is just wasteful and a huge boring mess, and the other half of me really dislikes Hallowe’en. I realize that, while I am not unique in my disdain of Hallowe’en, most people think dressing up and asking total strangers for more sugar than is reasonable to consume in a lifetime (and then doing it again the next year!) is fun, wow. Included among that group are my children, and so I play nice for their benefit.
A few years ago we realized that the boys got far too much candy and that we needed to do something about it. They collected so much that they couldn’t eat it all. Ever. Even the youngest, who could eat candy all day if we let him, was hard pressed to finish all of it by Christmas, and we usually just threw out what was left. Still, they’d collected it, it was theirs, and it seemed unfair to just take it away (Ok, it wasn’t unfair. We just didn’t want to listen to them howl). We decided that we’d make it worth their while to give it up. We’d buy it off of them.
As it turns out, cold hard cash is more appealing than chocolate so every Hallowe’en the loot gets dumped on the living room floor, inspected, and sorted into piles as follows:
- candy you like and want to keep
- candy you like but not that much
- candy you hate and that your brother and parents hate, too
- candy you hate but someone else likes
- chips
- sour candies (of which 50% are to be handed over to Mom because ain’t nobody happy if mama ain’t happy, and this helps)
Candy in the “like” pile is kept by the recipient. Candy that you hate but someone else likes gets traded or given away to another member of the family. Chips go into a big basket on the dining room table, because everyone likes those. I take my gummies with glee and promptly hide them. The rest gets counted out, and we pay a nickel a piece to haul it away. I usually take the discards to work, where I leave them in the lunch room, free for the taking.
It isn’t huge money that we’re handing out, and dental fillings cost more than their combined weight in candy measured at five cents a piece, so I figure we’re still ahead. I’m not entirely sure what parenting message we’re sending by buying it from them; I’m sure we’d be truer to our values if we just let them visit the houses on our block so that they didn’t end up with so much, but that would also be much less memorable, and as far as teachable moments go, I figure that Hallowe’en doesn’t have to be one of them.
P.S. Looking for something Hallowe’en related to do with your family this weekend? Tynan Studios is holding its third annual Click or Treat! fundraiser supporting the Daily Bread Food Bank this Sunday between 9 and 3 at Royal St. George’s College campus, located at 12o Howland Avenue, Toronto. Receive a free 4×6 of your little trick-or-treater for every bag of non-perishable food items you donate. Further details can be found on Tynan Studio’s website . Happy Hallowe’en!
4 Mothers 
Thus far our solution to the vast amounts of loot is, uh, the parent tax, which is to say that we eat it. (And yes, I did mention in a previous post that we spend the week before Halloween inhaling chocolate that we claim to have bought to give away to trick-or-treaters. Halloween is hard on the bathroom scale around here.) I’m not sure simply stealing it will be possible this year, though, as the oldest is getting to the point where she would probably notice. I heard about the buying approach this week, and it does sound like a possibly good solution–although she’s never had money of her own, and I’m not sure I want to get into all that just yet. Hmmm.
I’m totally on board with this plan! The boys were all recently given money to spend by a visiting aunt, and they loved going to the store to buy Lego. I’m plugging the “Collect your cash and spend it on Lego” line.
Awesome ideas to handle the large candy haul issue!! I completely agree that as teachable moments go Halloween does’nt have to be one of them.
Have a great and Happy Halloween everyone!