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Every kid loves candy, right? True, but many children end up with such an excessive load from Halloween that they are still munching on that candy months later. In fact, they may end up losing interest in it, picking around candies they do not like as much as the rest. As a parent, you probably get tired of seeing that pile of candy still sitting uneaten in their bedrooms weeks and weeks later.

What can you do with it though? Well, if they are willing to give it up and you take some time to organize Halloween candy, you can find ways to repurpose it.

Most candy has a fairly long shelf life. 1-2 months is a minimum; there are a lot of candies that actually will stay fresh for longer than half a year. So most uneaten candy can probably be repurposed even if months have passed since Halloween.

Purchase a few small plastic organizing containers and sit down with your children to go through their candy. Label the plastic bins for storage according to different uses you can think of for the candy, and then sort the sweets accordingly. Here are a few ideas:

• Use one bin for candy your children still want. Your kids probably are not going to want to give up all their remaining candy; some kids are great at rationing and simply are making their favorite sweets last as long as possible. Have small plastic bins with lids for each of your children to store the candy they are still eating.

• Donate the candy that your kids don’t want and which you have no other use for. There are Halloween candy buy-back programs out there which you can participate in. Through them, you can donate your candy to troops overseas or children in need.

• Set aside candy for recipes. A lot of Halloween candies, especially candy bars, can work really well in recipes. Check your holiday cookbook; you are bound to find a few that call for candy. And even if you do not, clever substitutions can work very well. Chop up a candy bar and use the chopped bits in cookies instead of chocolate chips.

• Think of candies which would work well in holiday craft treats. This is the perfect time of year to repurpose Halloween candy because there are so many holiday crafts which involve food! If you can’t think of a way to use Halloween candy in a regular recipe, surely you can use it decoratively on a gingerbread house or a sugar cookie. You can incorporate pretty much any type of candy into a gingerbread house if you are clever.

There is no reason to let your children’s uneaten Halloween candy go to waste. But there is also no reason it needs to sit around in their rooms or in your pantry uneaten for months on end. The holiday season is the time of the year for sweets, so buy a few bins and sort through that extra candy today!