Exactly so.
I also live in one of the Halloween destination neighborhoods. The neighbors in our cul-de-sac always do a block party with hot dogs and hamburgers and we all pool our candy at one table at the entrance, so we don’t have people actually coming up to each of our doors. We’ll hang out with the neighbors and drink for a few hours. Not how I would usually choose to spend my time, but it’s relatively painless.
It’s non-toxic: Play-Doh FAQ - mostly flour, salt, and water.
Kids don’t trick or treat in our neighborhood, we are just on the edge of rural though so no sidewalks and very few streetlights. Not very safe for that stuff.
Terrific! Ignorance fought. How about calories?
I may or may not be home that night. If I’m home, I probably will. I just moved into a new neighborhood a few months ago and there seem to be a lot more kids around than in my old neighborhood so I’m a bit excited to see the turn out.
Well, we don’t turn on our outside lights and we don’t decorate, so it’s pretty obvious that we don’t have treats, ergo no one knocks on our door or rings the doorbell, ergo, the pets are not freaked out.
I feel very slightly guilty now for dressing up the dogs to make them less scary for the smaller ToTers. The cat is uninterested in the proceedings.
No need to feel guilty - my critters don’t like the doorbell, and as I mentioned in my OP, one of the cats will try to get out. We used to have a dog that *lurved *anyone who showed up at the door, so Halloween was no biggie for her. But one of our cats in particular is mega-timid and I’d rather she not be stressed.
I get at most a half-dozen kids a year - wish there were more, but I guess I live too much in the country. I don’t like to stock up on candy that I must either throw out or eat (neither is appealing) and I suspect the kids that do come by already consume at least as much candy as is healthy.
So my solution: I hand out dollar coins; a really good costume gets a couple. These are popular, once explained (many kids & adults are unfamiliar with them). The leftovers go back to the bank.
It would be a bit strange if it hadn’t been noticed that a widely marketed children’s’ toy, in production for 50+ years, was toxic.
Probably not important - it’s really salty.
We live in an area where the houses are far apart (acre lots), and there aren’t many kids to begin with, so we don’t get many trick-or-treaters. The one time I was ready for them, nobody knocked on our door, so now we just turn of the porch light and hide. I think the few kids all go a couple of blocks over where the houses are closer together.
I clicked the wrong option - meant to do the last one. Whoopsie!
Too dark and weird and rural for trick-or-treaters here.
I’m going to a halloween party, but if I were home, I’d love to hand out candy. I’m still considering doing the thing of putting a bowl out on the porch with a sign to take a piece of candy.
I always have good candy. Some years I run out, other years I have enough candy to last me until next Halloween. I never can tell.
But this reminds me. Last year, when Halloween fell on a Sunday, for some reason I got trick-or-treaters–real ones, in costume–on both Friday and Saturday. 
On Friday I didn’t have the candy yet but I told them to come back on Halloween. I figure they must have been on their way to a party, but WTF? It’s only one night, and that night is the 31st. However, the ones who came by on Saturday got candy. I figured, why not?
(I know some small towns decree other t-or-t nights so it can be done on a weekend, but I think that’s a strange plan. It’s like moving the 4th of July so it’s always part of a 3-day weekend.)
No, because this is a rural area. No sidewalks or street lamps out here, so we don’t get any ToT’ers.
My ‘forgotten option’: no - I live in a private apartment building. If I ever live in a house that gets Halloween traffic, I’ll keep some candy on hand.
Yeah, apparently it’s salted to hell to both preserve it and to keep kids from chowing down.
Play-Doh is an awesome idea, though. I’ll have to look for that this weekend when I buy goodies for the kids in the hospital.
I’m another “other”, for the same reason others said: I have candy ready, and I fully intend to give it out, but the modal number of kids who have knocked on my door on Halloweens past has been zero. I can’t really say that I’m giving out candy, if nobody takes it.
Oh, and Queen Tonya:
It’s not necessarily about safety. Most years I ended up trick-or-treating in other neighborhoods, not because Mom was afraid for my safety, but just because the haul was better. It was generally a neighborhood where a friend lived, though, so we could use his house as a home base.
Our town doesn’t schedule it for weekends, but they do schedule alternate ToT nights if Halloween falls on Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday so people don’t have to choose between ToT and attending church or the high school football game, respectively.