Are you constantly drowned in toys at home? Or tired of having to clean up the chaos of toys in almost every corner of your home, every day? Well then, this page may bring you some good news!
It’s inevitable that toys are an essential part of a child’s development and in most cases they can be a fantastic learning tool in one way or more. And as parents, it’s only normal to want to give our little humans everything. “Oh, this toy looks fun, and that toy looks educational”. Every toy seem to have its own use and so often we fall into the “trap” of buying way too many toys before we even realise it.
But in a (not so) recent research by the University of Toledo, studies have shown that children who have less toys ended up having longer durations of play and played with the toys in a greater variety of ways. This shows that with less toys, the children tend to engage in longer periods of play with a single toy and hence allowing them better focus to explore and play more creatively.
Relating our personal experience, we noticed that when we bring our kids to a toy store, they are so overwhelmed with the vast sea of toy selection. Attempting to play with as many toys as possible, their interaction per toy was no more than 10 seconds. And given such a short period, they would also have not fully explored the toy before moving on to the next.
If that is not enough to convince you to take the minimalist route with toys, here are 5 more reasons to motivate you along this path.
Children by nature are creative and imaginative. So when they have less toys, they will stretch their imagination and creativity to make the most of whatever they have; they start creating their own fun! This works extremely well with open-ended toys where 1 toy/object can become a myriad of things.
For us, its humbling to watch our kids jump onto stackies one moment claiming it to be a ship, and another moment, stackies becomes a jail, and then a trampoline, and then a couch, and a bridge and a track for their cars. And at the end of the day, it becomes a really comfortable lounging floor bed for ourselves.
Open ended toys does not stop at stackies. There are various open ended toys out there which are really worth the money because they “grow” with our imaginations; or should we say, our imaginations grow with them?
Like our earlier shared experience at the toy store, the large selection of toys at the store created an over stimulating environment for the child. It’s really difficult to focus on one toy when so many other interesting toys are calling out at them “play me!!!”.
Once options are reduced, naturally there will be less distractions, leading to more focused play and deeper engagement with each toy.
Well, naturally when resources are scarce, it becomes more precious. And when resources are a plenty, they get under-valued. Toys are the same in this case. When toys are in abundance, children may not even notice a missing toy or two, or even 10! However, if toys were limited, any missing piece would contribute to losing many play methods. Knowing this, they would also take better care of their toys, reducing the amount of missing or broken toys at home.
By limiting the number toys, it also conveys the message to the child that it is not often new toys are added to the collection. Just be sure those toys are ones your child enjoy and adds value to their play. As such, they will learn to appreciate it, instead of always wanting something new or something better. In this case, quality over quantity!
Okay, although we have sets of stackies at home that literally transforms into many other things, it does not mean we deprive our children from a visit to the toy store. And like all other kids, they too would ask a very familiar question “can we buy this?”.
And by deliberately choosing a minimalist approach with toys, we too have a very familiar respond to their question. “Do we already have it?”, “do we need this?”, and “can another toy at home serve the same function?”. This helps to foster the “think before buying” mindset where the child learns to make purchase decisions based on what is needed instead of impulse purchases that will simply add to clutter. Over time, children learn to be more intentional and purposeful with their choices. Our 3 year old will now walk into the toy store and tell us “we have this already, but in a different colour (or shape).” and automatically moves on to the next toy.
Don’t we all agree that clutter adds to stress? This applies to children as well. Too many toys scattered all over their play area makes it overwhelming for a child, added with the stress of having to pack their toys after playing makes them feel lost. “Where should I start?” and “where does this go?”. Imagine having to identify various pieces of toys and figuring out which box they belong to. Even us parents find it difficult to declutter and pack up at the end of everyday.
With fewer but more meaningful toys, we observed that our kids not only engage with the toys in deeper and more meaningful play, it also made cleaning up a more pleasant experience. Our kids were more confident knowing exactly which toy goes where, and the best part was we did not have to do the cleaning up ourselves! There were less yelling, shouting and definitely a lot less chaotic.
While there are many other benefits of a minimalist approach when it comes to toys, these are the top 5 that team stackies have found most relevant. And again, we could not stress enough as we have mentioned it over and over again in this article, while less is indeed more, the quality of toys that we pick needs to add value to our children to create meaningful play. Quality does not always mean expensive, it simply just translates to how much value it adds to our kid’s play.
Ready to explore the minimalist approach to toys? One way is to start off with our stackies modular play couch! With just 1 couch, you get infinite builds for non-stop imagination and play time. Our shop just around the corner!