It's a playroom, and just be thankful it's NOT your LR!!!!

I would suggest cubes/cubbies for toy storage. When my own children were young, there were still wooden orange crates and I used those, stacked up, on the wall for toy clean-up. Too bad they are no more - they were FREE!

I think lining things on the walls makes the most sense for a playroom because it leaves the maximum open space in the middle for play. It looks like a great space for kids. Love the low hanging mirror - kids do love to look at themselves!

Our rule was that if a toy is in the playroom, it need not be picked up and put away on a daily basis; in the bedroom, it must. When the floor could not longer be seen in the basement, we did a big clean-up. There must be somewhere in a house that is a "no-police" zone, and for me, that was the basement playroom - out of sight, out of mind!

Nice space! If you do ever feel like you have too much stuff out and you have extra space somewhere (attic maybe), consider doing a toy rotation. We don't have a play room so some stuff is kept in our living room. (When it gets to me I just tell myself someday the toys won't be there and that'll mean they're grown up!) I pulled all the toys out together and sorted. Some things were donated but everything else was put into groups with a variety in each. Now I have four small storage containers and the contents of one is kept in the living room and is rotated out every few weeks. There are some toys that are played with on a regular basis that stay in their bedrooms. We find the rotation really helps them actually play with their stuff and helps me with the amount of stuff.

I think either becky's, Anglo's or shee's advice is good. You just have to decide which would actually work best in you household. It looks like a great place to play. I have one child who hates mess and another who works best in it and one to young to know yet. So the two with preferences each have a zone to themselves to keep as they wish until Sunday when we all sort through our things together so I can vacuum the floor.

I am not thinking you need help. Your children have a great space for THEM. You have all the elements and how fabulous it is out of the way from adult living spaces. I say you just carry on. As they grow this room will have to transition into a teen hang out and then you can be concerned with making it all look decorated.

As long as you don’t see it from the spaces where you entertain I would agree a weekily clean up is all you need . Just make sure you have enough bins to be able to separate like things together. It is a good learning tool for kids . I would get a couple of bean bag chairs , forget the endtables. They will grow up very fast and the needs will change. We also got our kids to go through the toys in Dec. before Christmas and sent all the ones they did not play with to the womens shelter. I also did not let them have all the Christmas toys at once we divided them in 1/2 and the other half got pulled in June when the first 1/2 got put away.

That is a great room! It is just too much stuff and with too much stuff comes lost items and toys that don't work. A cleaning and reorganizing (with labels) then daily pick ups. You are a great parent to offer such a nice play room.

Allowing your children to leave toys all over the floor for hours on end is a trip and fall risk for them, and more seriously for you and your spouse.

Certainly there is a happy medium between OCD perfection and pandemonium.

Children can still be creative and clean up after themselves and learn the good habits that will help them in school (and life) and to be good guests, even as young children.

Habits that are not reinforced in the home tend to not be practiced outside the home.

(Table manners are a good example. Yes, I'm 110 years old, in case you are wondering. No, I'm not, table manners are another one of my pet peeves.)

I suggest breaking down all the things your kids have into dedicated zones:

I'll give you some examples:

Lego zone

Blocks zone

Arts and crafts zone- further broken down by materials, maybe: painting easel area, other arts and crafts, etc

Dress-up zone

Play kitchen zone

Trains and tracks zone

So you need to reorganize the room that way into little mini-zones.

If you notice, that is the way that pre-schools and kindergarten rooms are organized.

Within each zone, items should be in easy to put away containers that are clearly marked with labels if your children can read, or photos if they can't.

You can use clear plastic bins that make it easy for them to see what us inside, too, with lids that snap closed, so when they pull things out they are less likely to spill everything.

Cubbies and shelves should be at their height.

You need to train your child that when they are finished playing in one zone, they must put away everything they used from that zone before they go to another zone.

That will take some effort on your part spending some time with them down there, watching them as they go from one activity to the next.

Once you have trained them to clean up each area before going on to the next, you can also tell them that at the end of the day or before lunch you will give them a 5 minute (or however long you think it will take) notice to put everything away. (You've already given the 10 minute notice that playtime is ending.)

What would work better is if you bought an easy-to-work timer that they could set themselves, so they are in control of it, and you just say, "Okay, Clean up time, Please set your alarm for 5 minutes." And reinforce the heck out of them when they have cleaned up appropriately within the 5 minutes.