For families who celebrate Halloween, this is a really fun time of year. Yes, sometimes there is a scramble to get the costumes together at the last minute, but overall it is pretty darn sweet to see our kids all dressed up and watch them trick-or-treat.
The only challenging thing is the ENORMOUS bags of candy that only seem to get bigger and bigger with every fall festival, classroom party, and doorbell that they ring.
So, I’m on a quest to find out what my fellow mamas do with all that candy…
In my house we tackle this in 4 very non-creative, simple ways:
1. Outsource: I bring bags of candy to my grad students. We unload some of the candy, and students seem happy.
2. The Magic Candy Bag: We have a bag, stored at the top of the cupboard that holds all the goodies. It is not magical but the kids look at it and talk about it as if it was. This bag becomes very useful for bribes (e.g., “if you finish those last 2 bites of asparagus…”), as well as spontaneous rewarding (e.g., “I’m so impressed with how you cleaned up without being asked to” – wait, I’ve actually never used this one before).
3. Hope for temporary memory lapse regarding the Magic Candy Bag. When the girls were younger, after a few days they seemed to forget the bag was there anymore. Thank you, Piaget and lack of object permanence! As they have grown older, however, their cognitive development has increased (imagine that), especially in the area of treats.
4. Eat candy myself: This one is pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll just note my husband likes to join in on this too.
I keep thinking there must be more ideas somewhere…isn’t there a creative Pinterest activity for melting the candy and creating a dessert or sculpture? Maybe a Lego-inspired candy castle that we can try to make?
My fellow mamas, what do you do with all that Halloween candy this time of year?
