Overwhelmed by too much stuff
Less really is more
After a peaceful break in the Netherlands spent playing with cousins, childhood friends and family (with minimal toys involved), I’m frantically decluttering. We’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but… life. I finally managed to give away a lovely wooden toy kitchen and all the cooking accessories, creating more space and less clutter. Just the idea of this large object being gone gives me a strange sense of relief.
I’ve also spent today sorting clothes into ‘charity’, ‘throw away’ and ‘donate’ piles, which, of course, all requires additional work of organising the charity run and then worrying about whether a tiny stain means it’s not fit for charity or donating, but feeling guilty for the endless waste. Now there’s another pile: the textile recycling pile. I did all this while the kids danced on my bed listening to songs on repeat and trying on their once-loved, too-small clothes.
Anyhow - if reading this makes you want to do the same, you’ll know the feeling well - that too many things are overwhelming, but it takes so much work to stay on top of the amount of clutter we acquire (thanks, consumerism + the dopamine hit of shiny new things).
While kids may constantly demand new things, I notice my kids feel the overwhelm of abundance too - just more subtly. If they are in a room with dozens of toys, it’s more likely that many will get discarded quickly, but a stick or some puddles outside will entertain them for much longer. Most of their stocking-fillers this year were barely glanced at - there was the next shiny thing to focus on, making appreciation of the gifts decline with each subsequent gift.
I’ve written about some research around this for Bold, which backs up a lot of this overwhelm we all feel - but there’s more to it. Fewer toys leads to greater creativity - a snippet of the post is below or the link to the full article is here.
It makes me even more aware of the importance of experiences over stuff, and focussing on quality over abundance - with a little leeway for cheap stocking-fillers as the delight of Christmas morning is somewhat priceless…
Giving children fewer toys to play with
When I take my children outside, their imaginations quickly take flight. A stick becomes a wand, sand becomes a castle, or mud becomes a cake. They can spend hours playing in nature, whereas at home they become restless more quickly, even when they have access to plenty of toys. We rotate toys and try to keep clutter to a minimum (easier said than done!), since we have learned that the children are far more interested when fewer toys are available. There’s a good reason why: Too much choice is overwhelming for most of us. It turns out the same is true for children, and fewer toys can lead to more engaged play.
“Fewer toys can lead to more engaged play.”
In one study, toddlers who were presented with just four toys played more creatively, with greater focus, and for a longer time with each toy, than children who were presented with 16 toys. Those given more toys tended to move between them more quickly, suggesting that they were distracted by the sheer abundance of options. The researchers concluded that the presence of more toys leads to “persistent distraction, influencing the quality of toddler play”, which can cause them to stop playing with any given toy more quickly.
Letting children take the lead when playing
When adults become too involved as a child is playing, imaginative play declines. Four- to six-year-olds in one study were given a new toy to play with, featuring several tangled tubes of multiple colours that lit up, played music, squeaked, and revealed a secret mirror when manipulated in certain ways. In one scenario, researchers acted as if they didn’t know what the toy could do, whereas in another, they showed the children that the toy squeaked when a tube was pulled. Each child was then left to play alone with the toy. Those who had not seen the toy’s squeak function found more ways to play with it, while those who had been shown that function made the toy squeak repeatedly and played with it for less time. Instructing children how to play, the study suggests, “constrains children’s exploration and discovery”, whereas children who are given free rein tend to play longer.
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