How to Handle the Hauls of Halloween
Executive summary: I love Halloween for so many reasons, but I need a system to deal with the attendant plastic junk and overflowing candy stash in a way that avoids meltdowns (either mine or the kids’).
Halloween has reclaimed its title as my favorite holiday. I admit that it’s more fun as a child or with a child, but since I left the former status behind, I’ve more recently attained the latter as a parent. The combination of the crisp(er) fall days, the costumes and pageantry, the excessive sugar rush, and of course the trick-or-treating puts me in a light-hearted mood. I confessed to another parent last week that I personally went trick-or-treating every year until I was 16, simply for the joy of dressing up and walking door-to-door to ogle the decorations and obtain the necessary ingredients for said sugar rush. Now that my son has reached an age where he understands and gets excited about holidays, the full thrill of Halloween is back again, after taking a bit of a dip during my childless (child-free?) late teens and twenties. Because let’s face it: handing out candy just isn’t as fun as collecting candy!
Here’s where we encounter a hiccup: I love Halloween and its trappings, but I hate the stream of plastic paraphernalia that it brings. Between school events and costume parties, it gets hard to gate-keep the trinkets that find their way into my kids’ hands. Candy I can deal with – consumable items get somewhat of a free pass from minimalist me (although I still regularly empty our pantry of foods I don’t think we’ll ever eat, including old Halloween candy). No, I’m talking about the million little knickknacks that hitch a ride home with our kids. The plastic pumpkins and cauldrons, the light-up skeletons, the spider rings, the junk haul of Halloween. Kids are trash magnets at the best of times, but with Halloween largely being a kid-centric holiday, the accumulation is especially pronounced this time of year. Perhaps we should rename it Haul-oween.
Consumable paraphernalia are my go-to when I want to inject a little festivity into my life.
So what to do? Well, my general philosophy is “out of sight, out of mind.” The moment my kids let a doodad out of their sight, I bury it in a designated cupboard and see if they remember to ask for it later. The vast majority of the time, the answer is no, particularly when there is a pile of candy to distract them with. It just goes to show how this random stuff really is junk that doesn’t hold their attention for more than a few initial minutes of novelty. My kids are not discerning consumers in the slightest – please stop tempting them with these baubles so I don’t have to “evanesco!” them later.
Circling back to the topic of candy, I am a parent who allows my kids to satisfy their sweet tooth. As long as they are eating a (somewhat) balanced diet, I have no problem with dessert. Withholding it may just open the floodgates someday, so we might as well allow some reasonable consumption now, under our adult oversight. That being said, I don’t want my son to whine for the fourth piece of candy in a day, so I apply the same philosophy: hide it until it’s asked for. When that happens, I select a few pieces I think he’ll like and allow him to choose one for dessert (maybe two if he’s had an extra nutritious meal). That way, I don’t show him the size of the entire stash and remind him that there’s a bottomless pile of candy waiting for him. I pick trick, he picks treat, and we all go home happy and none the wiser. ;-)
Whether we call it Haul-oween or Halloween, it remains my favorite for the time being, as I rediscover the excitement I felt as a child with my own children. That special combination of candy, costumes, and crunchy leaves underfoot always brings a smile to my face. I hope you have a howlin’ good time on this haunted holiday!