How does your house look with young children?

[ElevatorGoUpndown]

I have a cleaner who comes weekly and have a 1 & 4 years old DC.
It feels very hard to keep on top of things. My 4 year old boy just brings all his toys at all at once despite telling 100 times to bring only one toy out at a time.
I am really struggling to keep the house tidy.
There's so much of clothes for baby. She keeps outgrowing them so fast. I try to sell them but still some bags lying around.
The toys and clothes are the biggest clutter in the house.
Kids have their own playroom and house is 4 bed house.
Looking for advice on keeping house tidy.

Same ages, we both work full time, no cleaner, and honestly it feels like a bomb site 90% of the time. The younger one is more messy, she just follows me around untidying whatever I’m putting away.

So I've got a two year old and a four year old. We have all the toys in the lounge (no toys in their bedroom and we don't have a playroom) and I stopped the cleaner six months ago as life is expensive. We have fitted bookshelves that we put boxes of themed toys on (trains, track, big cars, little cars). They can have more than one toy out but they need to be playing with it - if they aren't I stop them and get them to put it away. We reset each night when they go to bed (five mins). Outgrown clothes I fabric bin - don't have time or energy to sell or sort for charity. I then use the Home Tasker app to stay on top of cleaning.

@Brbreeze I have sympathy for you. My younger one doesnt makes much mess. She plays with her toys and walker etc. But my little boy is just a nightmare with his toys.

God I love a declutter.

Clothes seem to multiply, I know what you mean. I limit myself to one big bag for Vinted and anything else not good enough to sell get donated - local clothing bank, local mum WhatsApp network, neighbours, family, charity shop. Things take a while to sell on Vinted and so I don’t want bags and bags lying around).

I donated big bulky toys that they never play with but I keep having to tidy up (make it make sense!) to my kids’ nursery. Namely the very expensive Brio collection that I could have sold had I been arsed. But at least DD can still play with it at nursery.

When your kids start school you may find there are loads of decluttering opportunities - every term there are ‘bags2school’ donations (send in unwanted clothes and the school gets money), cuddly toy collections, jolly jars (fill a jam jar with those annoying little homeless toys, stickers, party bag crap etc, instead of paying for a mufti day etc), send old school uniform to the second hand uniform pile at school etc.

1 toy at a time is not fun!! So limiting!! I often just leave toys out for them to get on with again in the morning. But I’m 10 years into parenting so have relaxed somewhat.

By 1 toy at a time I mean couple as my little boy tends to put out baskets of toys from the IKEA shelves we have installed where we can sort out toys in 12 baskets. It's crazy though how much clutter we end up having. I will look for options to donate.