If you are anything like me, you took your child our trick-or-treating, and you collected far more candy than your child could or should ever eat. My son loved trick-or-treating so much this year, we collected the equivalent of three of those jack o’lantern pails. He’s not going to eat one of them let alone three. This leaves us searching for ways to get rid of all that candy. If you arent’t eating it yourself (surprisingly, I’ve never taken anything from my son’s Halloween haul), here are some suggestions to get rid of it:
1. Donate It
There are plenty of charitable organizations like the Ronald McDonald House or Soldiers’ Angels who will gladly accept the candy and provide it to children or soliders. These are just two examples. A simple Google search could discover more, or if you have a favorite charity send it to them.
2. Sell It
Increasingly, there are places that will either give you cash, coupons, or swag in exchange for your excess candy. You can find places that participate in these programs by vising Halloween Candy Buy Back‘s website.
3. Save for Christmas
Look, in about a month or so, you are going to be hanging the stockings by the chimney with care. Instead of going out and buying a Snickers or M&M’s with a red and/or green wrapper, just stick the candy with the normal wrapper in your child’s stocking.
4. Use for Goody Bags or Piñata
Sooner or later your child is going to have a birthday, and with it a birthday party. Instead of buying new candy or going without candy, stick a couple of pieces in the goody bags. If you have enough leftover, you could even put them in a piñata to add another fun event to your child’s birthday party.
5. Add It to Breakfast
One way to encourage your child to get them to start cooking is to use the candy to get them to help you make breakfast. The easiest way to do that is to make pancakes or waffles. The easiest candies to incorporate are M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces. Although you could cut up the fun sized candy pieces down to smaller chunks if you wanted. The easiest way to incorporate the candy would be to drop them onto the unbaked side of the pancake or waffle. You could also toss the candy with some flour to help prevent the candy from dropping to the bottom of the batter.
6. Bake with It
There are any number of things you could do with candy in baking. You could incorporate them into cake or cupcake batter. Another idea is once the icing is put on the cakes, your child could then stick the candy on the icing of the cake, or you could use a piece of candy as a decoration atop a cupcake. If you’re really daring, you could make a cake or cupcake in the theme of the specific candy. It should be noted we did this with my son’s birthday cake last year much to his delight:
For example, make a vanilla cake, put some peanuts and caramel between the layers, cover with chocolate icing, and then stick some chopped up Snickers bars around the cake.
You could also melt it down to make a bark or cover pretzels.
7. Incentivize with It
Is there an area where your child needs to improve? Putting toys away? School? Manners? You can use the extra candy as an incentive program to help reward good behavior. And yes, I mean incentivize. There’s a fine line between incentivizing and bribing. Bribing is telling them if they do something, they’ll get it. Incentivizing is giving it to them without first promising it to them.
8. Family Movie Night
Instead of going out to the movies, maybe have a family movie night at home. Rent a new movie the kids haven’t seen, make some popcorn, and give them some of the candy from Halloween. This way they get some of the movie theater experience right at home. If you’re able to find a movie on Netflix or HBO, you’ve created a fun night without spending an extra dime.
9. Bring It to Work
You know if you bring anything to work and leave it out in the open, the vultures around your office will soon circle and clean you out.
10. Save For Next Halloween
Candy takes a long time to expire. If you really have that much candy, just save it in a cool dry place and use it to hand out to trick or treaters who come to your home next year.