Toddlers are happier with fewer toys, study finds

According to a study, toddlers play longer and more happily when there are fewer toys to choose from. Better yet, the researchers say fewer toys mean more opportunities for creativity, imagination and skill development.

For the study, to be published in Infant Behavior and Development, researchers at the University of Toledo set up children younger than 3 years old in rooms with either four or 16 toys. As the researchers observed the play habits, they noted the toddlers with four toys engaged “in longer periods of play with a single toy, allowing better focus to explore and play more creatively.”

Even if you’ve already taken one too many trips down the toy aisle at the store, the researchers say it could help to just put the options on rotation. This, they say, provides “opportunities for novelty without creating the distraction posed by having too many toys available.”

As the amazing Allie Casazza said in her essay “How getting rid of stuff saved their childhood,” both parents and kids prosper when they aren’t weighed down by things:

So science proves it: Kids are happier with fewer toys. And you probably will be, too.