So, when the house looks like a bomb went off with toys everywhere, it is time to create systems and rules to help your little ones learn to clean up. This starts with us as parents. The children can’t do it on their own. Today most families have an abundance of toys. Start with cleaning out the ones they no longer play with or are broken. Then create a place for every toy. If there is not enough room within the environment, or there are just too many toys, consider a toy rotation. Put the other toys in totes at the top of the closet or in the attic and make a plan to rotate them. In my home with a childcare program, we rotate the toys by season and theme. Every family needs to figure out what works for them. 
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One of the most difficult things to figure out when planning a play space for our littles is how many objects go into a basket at one time. For instance, should the car basket have 25 cars or 10 cars? This again depends on the ages of the children. With my littles in childcare, ten small cars are plenty, but when my grandchildren who are four and six years old come over, we end up getting more cars out. We have the same issue with the magnet tiles. The older children want to create more elaborate creations which need more tiles. It may require a little time and adjustments to figure out what works in your environment. 
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Next, decide on several times of the day when everyone will stop and pick up. In our house, we pick up before we go outside {midmorning}, before lunch, before nap, before dinner, and at the end of the day. Include rules for projects that are in process, possibly a safe shelf, this becomes more important with kids five and older. Labeling shelves, and baskets or boxes with pictures is helpful for little ones to be able to figure out where things belong.
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Don’t expect young children to be able to clean up independently the first time. It is a learning process. Making it a game by beating a song, is a fun way to motivate the children. Ask each child to pick up one type of toy, such as “Jonny pick up all the cars”, “Carl pick up the story books and put them on the shelf”, and “Suzy pick up all the puppets.”  When an adult can break the mess down into categories it is quickly conquered. After working together for several weeks, the kids should be able to be started on cleaning up and the adult should be able to walk away but stay close and redirect if necessary. Over time it will get easier, and the children will need less and less direction. 
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What kinds of homes do toys need? Toy boxes and large baskets only lead to dumping everything to find the missing toy on the bottom of the basket or box, I encourage parents and providers to not use this type of storage. Cube storage is better as is shelving with baskets. The number of toys out at one time is going to depend on the ages of the children. But it comes down to the number of toys need to be a manageable amount for the child/children to put away independently. In our program, we currently have six children under three. We have an eight-cube shelf with four medium-sized baskets that hold Magna tiles, cars, puppets, and blocks, and another smaller basket holds infant explorations activities. The other cubes hold three larger trucks, a shape sorter, a ring stacker, stacking cups, a mirror, a bottle with wooden objects to put in it, and a tray with a wooden balance toy and objects to balance on it. We also have a slightly larger basket with some dress-up materials and scarves in it. A baby doll bed and two dolls. It does get messy while they are all playing but they all know where the toys belong and can clean up when the time comes. We have found that at times when the kids don’t want to clean up it is usually because there is too much out, and they are overwhelmed. These toys are rotated monthly. All current toys do not necessarily get put away when we rotate toys. We watch their play for a few days before the toy rotation making mental notes of what they are playing with and what they aren’t using. 
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But why is it so important to teach this skill? Let’s look at all the skills they are learning when they are cleaning up and putting those toys away. They are learning to match like objects, all the cars go in this basket. They are learning associations; all the baby doll stuff goes in the left bottom cube. They are learning if they want to find the toys the next time, they need to put them away correctly. They are learning cooperation as they work together. The children learn very early on that when they don’t clean up toys get broken, and they trip on them and get hurt. So, by cleaning up they are taking care of the materials they play with, and they are keeping everyone safe.  
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By definition, heuristic means allowing a person to discover or learn something for themselves. Heuristic play, which is often referred to as loose parts play, allows children to learn by exploring everyday objects placed in the environment. This exploration allows children to develop in many areas from building language skills and vocabulary to development of fine motor skills, to learning about basic scientific and math concepts to gross motor skills. Children can explore objects, and concepts creatively with no preconceived ideas of the right or wrong way. As they work together, they build language skills and social skills. Heuristic play is often referred to as Loose-parts play. Loose parts are great for exploring early math concepts such as counting, size, shape, and balance. They allow for the exploration of new scientific concepts from physics to technology, to life science. Basic skills of observation, comparison, classification, measurement, inference, and prediction can easily be included in play. By changing a variable children can experiment with the materials. They learn to understand the world around them while increasing self-sufficiency and building confidence.

Another play object the children enjoy is a wooden tissue box I bought at Micheals Arts and Crafts years ago. We fill it with scarves, which they love to pull out and throw. We have placed fabric letters inside which they pull out and name and we discuss what starts with the letters sound.  We have added different types of fabric inside the box for new sensory experiences. We build on their vocabulary by discussing how each fabric feels and what other things feel the same way. In the fall we fill it with silk leaves which are pulled out, thrown, raked, picked up, counted, sorted, and felt offering a sensory experience too.

Young Children benefit from the use of “exploration baskets”. These are baskets a caregiver fills with objects from around the house. A shiny basket might include a plastic silver Christmas ball, a silver bell, a metal cup, a small metal pitcher, a small metal bowl, a metal spoon, and a plastic mirror. Even a ball of crinkled tin foil is an interesting object to explore. Sit the basket of objects out on a blanket free for them to interact with as they choose. Another type of baskets, I routinely create are various color baskets with different objects all the same color. A blue basket might include a cup, a piece of blue patterned fabric, a blue ball, a pair of blue mittens, a blue cap, and a pretend person in a blue shirt. A cleaning basket might have a small dustpan and broom, a cleaning rag, a scrub brush, and a lint roller or a small feather duster. A younger child would explore and play with the items, but a two or three-year-old might just find it fun to help clean the house.  A cooking basket can be several cooking utensils in a bowl, measuring spoons, and measuring cups. Infants like to taste and touch the objects presented. An older child would benefit from including a pan of dry rice or other sensory filler to be able to mix pour and measure. A pet basket might include a cleaned dog feeding bowl, a few cat or dog toys a collar, a bandana, and a dog brush (I buy new ones to use for the basket and give them to the animals when we are done with the basket.) Including a stuffed cat or dog allows the basket to become a springboard for imaginative dramatic play for the three or four-year-old.  Children love nature baskets with seed pods, pinecones, sticks, rocks, shells, and anything else fun that is available depending on the season. Older children love nature baskets with magnifying glasses to explore the contents.  Just be sure to supervise children with small objects and objects that break into pieces. Use your imagination. Parents are a child’s first teacher. Every parent knows what their child likes.​

Older children can explore more difficult concepts with the materials. Several milk crates and flat boards allow for making structures, bridges, and ramps. Add cars and balls to allow for a different direction of play. Drainage tubing pieces and gutters are also fun to experiment with balls, water, boats, and other small objects. The children learn about gravity, balance, and simple tools.  By experimentation, children learn more advanced concepts often ones they do not fully understand yet.  Sticks, ribbons, boxes, pool noodles, old tires, logs, and stumps or all great loose parts for play.​

Both large and small objects can be used. By making an obstacle course out of found objects children learn about the bodies in space and develop their Proprioceptive system and the Vestibular system. They are known as the 6th and 7th senses. The proprioceptive system is the body's feedback system. It helps us move our arms and legs in a coordinating efficient manner so we can run and play without having to look around all the time. The vestibular system tells our brains about the body's balance, how it moves against gravity, speed of movement, size, and head position. These skills are learned by walking a balance beam, stepping from log to log, climbing a ladder or rope, climbing on a rock, or crawling under a table or chair.

This concept of heuristic play is far from a new idea. Children have played with loose parts and objects from around the house up until the 1940s and 1950s when it became a norm for children to have a lot of toys. In the US our children have more toys than in any other country. Do they need all the toys? It has been proven that children play better and longer when they have fewer toys.  With a little help from Mom or Dad, kids can learn and explore with everyday objects becoming creative, innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers who adapt and change with our changing world.  ​