Less Screens, More Play: Creating a Home That Encourages Creativity

Less Screens More Play:

Creating a Home That Encourages Creativity

Barbara is the founder of Smarty Pals. What started as a simple need to keep her kids engaged without screens quickly turned into something much bigger. Like many parents, she wanted play that felt calm, creative, and purposeful - but couldn’t find products that did it all, so she created them herself.

Barbara shares how to create a home that encourages creativity...

Start with what’s visible, not what’s in storage

Toys hidden inside cupboards may as well not exist. Kids gravitate toward whatever is at their eye line and within reach, which is usually the device on the coffee table.

The fix isn’t adding more toys. It’s rearranging what they already see. A small, well-styled play corner, even just a metre wide - gives little hands somewhere obvious to go. Think low shelves, open baskets, a soft place to land. Five things accessible beats fifty stuffed in a tub.

A trick we love: rotate.

Pull two or three toys out for the week, tuck the rest away. Familiar toys feel new again when they reappear a month later. Less clutter, more curiosity.

Make Play Vertical

Floors get crowded. Coffee tables get cleared for dinner. Walls, on the other hand, are nearly always empty, and they’re the most underused playspace in any home.

But the real magic is what vertical play does to a child. Standing up, reaching, building at eye level - it engages their whole body, encourages independent focus, and quietly builds fine motor skills while they think they’re just making a tower. Kids stay engaged longer when play is up at their height. And as a bonus: nothing on the floor for you to step on at 6am.

You can put it in a playroom, a bedroom corner, the side of a wardrobe, or even a hallway. It’s play that doesn’t demand a dedicated room.

Give them somewhere to land

Creative play has rhythms. Big bursts of building and making, then quieter pockets — a book, a daydream, a tired little body that wants to flop.

A toddler lounger is one of those pieces that earns its place every single day. Designed extra-deep and extra-wide, it's a piece of furniture that genuinely respects your interiors, but it’s also the spot where your toddler will read three books in a row, watch a movie, recover from a meltdown, or quietly host their stuffed animals for a tea party.

The lounger does something subtle but important: it tells your child this corner of the home is yours. And kids who feel ownership of a play space return to it more often.

Let the environment do the work

We don’t believe in screen-time guilt. Screens have their place - long-haul flights, sick days, the witching hour before dinner some Wednesdays. We’ve all been there.

But when the rest of your home offers a beautiful invitation to play; a wall that becomes a canvas, a lounger that becomes a fort, a basket that becomes a treasure chest; kids reach for that first. Not because you told them to. Because it was the most interesting thing in the room.

Less screens, more play. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

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