The Halloween Candy Chute

This Halloween, my neighbor and I wanted the kids to trick-or-treat but keep their distance. So we built a candy chute.

We took a six-foot length of cardboard tube from a carpet store, painted it orange with black spiders and attached it to the railing of my front steps at an angle. You put a piece of candy in the top, and it slides down into a kid's bag at the bottom.

The kids went absolutely wild for it. They lined up on the sidewalk, six feet apart, bags open. I stood at the top in a witch hat, dropping candy down the chute with a dramatic "WHOOSH!" Some kids asked to go twice just to watch it slide. One little boy in a dinosaur costume tried to climb up it.

We gave out four hundred pieces of candy. The neighborhood group posted photos of our chute, and by the end of the night, three other houses on the street had built their own.