Study Shows That Fewer Toys Can Improve the Quality of Your Kids’ Playtime

Have you ever mumbled under your breath, “You’d think they didn’t have buckets of toys,” after your kids found themselves giggling inside the cabinet that holds all the pots and pans? Or after they found more joy in wrapping paper after unwrapping a birthday gift than they ever found in their $80 fire truck?

There’s a recent study that just came out that might actually prove some validity in situations like this—that kids don’t need a ton of toys to find happiness.

Wait, what?

That’s right—this study could benefit all the parents in the world who are so over stepping on Legos with their bare feet or finding that creepy Peppa Pig puppet in the weirdest of places in your house (or is that just my kid?).

The new study, published in Infant Behavior & Development, prompted 36 toddlers between the ages of 18-30 months to play individually for a half hour in two separate playrooms. The first room had just four toys in it and the second had 16.

You might think that the children in the room with 16 toys were more giddy to have so many options of cool things put in front of them, but actually, the opposite was found to be true.

The kiddos who were in the room with just four toys were actively engaged for longer than those in the other room with more toys. That’s because with less toys to choose from, the participants were more likely to use the same toy longer, as they were more likely to try to come up with different ways to using it.

And that’s pretty important (and interesting), because that could suggest that having fewer toys may help toddlers develop sharper cognitive skills (a win-win for both parents and kids everywhere).

And that’s not all: The researchers found that the toddlers were actually more interested in the toys when there were less of them verses having a short attention span with so many different ones, and consequently losing focus.

“This suggests that the other toys present may have created a source of external distraction, provoking the participants to abandon play with a toy at hand to explore another,” they said.

It makes sense. Think about how you feel when you’re presented with 12 different restaurants that you have to choose from—how many people have actually made an efficient decision doing that than when you’re presented two and just have to choose one or the other?

It’s especially true earlier the developmental stages of life—children’s attention spans are incredibly short, and that can be made even more clear if they have a ton of toys put in front of them.

Additionally, the study also surveyed caregivers of the toddlers and the average number of toys these people had for their kids is shocking. The answer? 90! That’s not even including all of the caregivers who simply reported that they had “a lot” because they couldn’t actually come up with an accurate number.

And 90 isn’t even that bad—in a separate study of 32 middle-class American families, the average amount of toys in the home was 139, with the majority having at least 100 and some had upwards of 250.

It might be worth a shot to start slowly getting rid of some of these toys if you find yourself with baskets on baskets of ’em—they could be overwhelming your kids and making their attention spans even worse. And hey, even if it doesn’t work, at least your living room might be a lot cleaner?

What do you think of this study? Are you going to try getting rid of some of your kid’s toys? How many toys would you say you have in your home right now?