A Helpful Guide to Cleaning up Halloween Messes

With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, there's a pretty good chance that you and the kids are going to be up late; swimming in a sea of candy while you enjoy the final minutes of the Halloween movie marathon on TMC. And you know what happens when you stay up late eating sweets. You get tired; too tired to wash off your make up, the kids are now seeing the candy for the second time because they ate too much and the next morning you notice that one of them got some of that digested candy in their wig. Ewww. So, now what?

Deadspin enlisted a cleaning expert to help with all of your Halloween mess needs. Here are some of the highlights:

1. For colored hairspray, theater make up, fake blood, and Jell-O shot stains, use rubbing alcohol.
2. If you need to wash anything out of a wig, shampoo will do the trick.
3. Find chocolate in the carpet? Shout, Shout, will get it all out.
4. As for vomit, pick up as much as possible with paper towels before treating it with an enzymatic cleaner like Zout or Nature’s Miracle. If there’s a lingering odor, sprinkle baking soda, let it sit for awhile and then vacuum.
5. Remove pumpkin guts from your carving tools with WD40.

On a good note, Halloween falls on the same weekend as Daylight Saving Time, which means you get an extra hour to clean it all up.