Let's face it, even if you pick healthy alternatives to conventional Halloween candy, your child's school, daycare, or neighbors might not. So what do you do with all that candy when your kid brings it home from trick-or-treating? (Let me give you a hint: eating it yourself is NOT the answer.)

We've come up with a couple of ways to deal with the influx of candy that comes with the holidays (you can use this for Valentine's day and other holidays too).

1. Offer a "treat exchange" - we typically collect all the candy that Z has received and let her pick out one or two pieces that she keeps for treats over the next month or two. For the other candy, we let her exchange her conventional candy for treats that she gets to pick out at the natural foods store. She's given options of fruit juice, vegetarian "gummy" snacks, fruit leathers, blueberries covered in dark chocolate, or animal crackers. Depending on what she picks, we might even divide that treat up into two or three servings.



2. If your kids are young enough, introduce the idea of the Halloween fairy. We let Z pick out a couple of treats to keep and we purchase a small toy in advance of Halloween (we typically spend $6 or less on this toy). Since we pick it out ourselves, it can be something that we know fits with our values and will not just add clutter to her room and our house. After she's picked out the 2 treats that she wants to keep, we leave the rest in a pile and sometime during the night, the Halloween fairy comes and takes the candy away and leaves a toy. I'm not sure how long she'll go for this idea but it's worked great so far. If you don't want to introduce another myth to your kid's childhood, or if your child is older, you can offer a candy-for-toy swap. I suspect that this will work better if you have the toy in hand. I've heard of some families setting up a Halloween store complete with pricing (one item might be worth 10 candy bars, depending on how scary the pillowcase haul tends to be in your neck of the woods).

So, you've taken care of the kids, but what to do with the candy that you're trying to get out of the house?

Here are a few ideas:

• If your office has a candy jar, donate your loot


• Send your candy booty in a care package to a relative that will appreciate it


• Send a military care package


• Donate it to your local food bank


• Send it back to grandma (kidding!)

How do you deal with the candy at Halloween? What do you do with the leftovers?