By Jesse Welch of Sterilite Corporation
Wednesday night was the night my town had trick-or-treating. When I first moved into my house, I had a little experience handing out candy on Halloween, but nothing prepared me for the onslaught of children that would arrive at my door. A bag of candy can be many different sizes, but for our purposes, just picture them as small, medium and large. I had eight large bags of candy that year and managed to run out just past the half-way mark of trick-or-treating. It's a sad thing to have to turn the lights off and close up shop early.
I vowed that the next year, I wouldn't be caught unaware of what was coming. So, I bought 12 large bags of candy. This was a serious pile of sweets. However, the winds of fate changed that year and turnout was severely depressed, leaving me holding the bag(s of candy). I know what you're thinking, what a problem to have, too much candy. But considering I can't help but enjoy a piece or ten while the actual trick-or-treating is going on, I really didn't need all that extra candy hanging around the house.
I've done better more recently. Incorporating the forecast for the day of, some simple demographic data obtained from the town about the age of residents, and an algorithm I bought in an alley downtown, I deduce the proper number of bags to purchase within a margin of error of +/-1.7 bags. Okay, I don't really do any of that. I just kind of went somewhere in the middle – eight bags seems to do it.
Last year, I used my homemade Halloween costume to amuse the kids. I was a three-faced robot. Here, you can see that I have an upset stomach from all the snacking throughout the evening.
Every year, there are some constants. For instance, I use the same bowl to hold the candy as children approach the door and propose their "trick or treat" bargain. I tend to choose treat – seems the safer route. It's a large bowl and allows for all sorts of different kinds of candy to mix around in there. Even better, if there's some left, I just pop on the lid and save it for later. That way it's not nearly as big of a deal if we don't get many trick-or-treaters on a given year.
Another constant in this yearly ritual is the wrappers left from all the candy I've eaten throughout the night. It's a good idea to have something like this small wastebasket on hand to receive all that trash.
In my experience, Halloween can throw you a curveball or two. I use some Sterilite products to help mitigate the potential pitfalls associated with it. Next year, maybe I'll do a haunted house!
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