Sigh....my experience with kids rooms is that organization needs to be simple. Young children don't sort bins, they don't see disorganization and they sure as heck don't play neatly!
We have two giant tubs from Target and toys get put in the tubs. Mostly her toys in one and mostly his in the other. If you grab the wrong bin, throw the toy in anyway.
The room has never been so clean now that all they have to do with put the toys in a bin...any bin. I used to sort barbie from spiderman but FORGET IT!

Arthur looks like a fun guy.

I detest bins for young kids. They make no sense at all. A cupboard with doors and smaller containers that sort by type makes toy plan easier to organize and more fun. No boredom ever.

My theory is: the space should be simple enough that the child(ren) can, in theory, keep it maintained themselves. The younger the child, the fewer the toys that should be out. Simple simple simple shelves (ideally subdivided so one thing gets placed in each cubby). For our 2.5-year-old everything not on display lives in a closet and gets rotated in and out every couple of weeks. We try and enforce a rule where he takes out one thing at a time (or multiple things if he's truly using them together) and then puts that away before getting out something new, which I think helps him engage for a longer period with each thing and cuts down on the mess. It doesn't always work, but we do try! :)

This is our play area - our kid is 100% capable of maintaining the space all on his own. not that he always DOES without prodding, haha.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessandcolin/8347665182/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessandcolin/8347665696/in/photostream/

these playrooms are bigger than my apartment.

I don't know for older children, but sorting for very young children in the home isn't necessarily ideal. Our 1 year old's creativity really shines when he mixes toy types. A small stuffed animal might fit into a plastic car; an animal puzzle piece might find itself getting a ride in the back of a dump truck.

Plus, as @darlingclementine noted, these playrooms offer space for organization that many of us don't have! For us, what works better is just having fewer options out so that almost everything can all get thrown into one bin during the clean-up song.

Our kids are two and a half and five. They follow us around the house and play wherever we are, so no organised play room would be big enough. And I fully agree with darlingclementine about these luxury, roomy spaces.

Sorry but to me all that stuff on display only spells one word: DUST. Only books should be allowed on shelves, all the rest goes in cupboards or containers.

Does anyone know where you can get that white wall organizer that's on the third pic, the fire island one? I've never seen that before.

@judy the one in the photo is a uten.silo:
http://www.dwr.com/product/uten-silo-ii.do#.UREWfkr9ngk

land of nod is selling a knock off right now, although not in white:
http://www.landofnod.com/i-couldve-bin-a-container-wall-organizer/f10823

I agree, that is a huge playroom!
As a mother of five I have learned a few things.

1. Organizing kids is nonsense, there is no such thing and if it is too complex they aren't going to do anything as it is too overwhelming.

2. Books, small things and big things is all the separation you need.
Books need to lay flat somewhere and not in too big of stacks, otherwise small hands have trouble getting them to stand up, or get all the pages into small wall slots etc.
Small things need a bin of their own or they all fall to the bottom and get lost under the big stuff.

3. No matter how big, beautiful or well organized the bedroom or playroom is, children want to be with people and want to play where the people are. Nothing will stay in a room where there are no people, so make room in the kitchen, dining room, family room or where ever the people are the most.

I agree wholeheartedly with Thera! Just make sure they clean up afterwards...banishing them in a single room is so boring. Let them be free and have fun- of course there have to be some rules - they can;t be throwing around lego pieces- but broadly let them be free and creative.....spend a few minutes everyday to enforce the clean up rule eventually it will work! and all these playrooms look fancy but does the child even appreciate the decor or care? they want to just have fun!

Your kids leave things on the shelf long enough to collect dust?

I second this!! As a mom of three, this is my experience too. I love to be surrounded by my family.

Learning this too! I do feel lucky to have a basement playroom and we do use it, but only when we make a special trip down. The toys that get used the most are the ones that we rotate in bins throughout the main living area.

I see playrooms get used more by bigger kids with playmates over... during the baby/toddler years it makes sense that it's all about being where mom is, etc.

I think the "small kids don't sort" comments are not universal. It depends on the kid. My 2.5 year old likes to sort his toys. Heck, he tells me sometimes when things are out of place. We use a combination of small sorting and large baskets/ bins to hold all of our toys. He often mixes toys while playing but puts them back into their separate bin/basket/bag when cleaning up. The organization allows him to find what he's looking for and keeps my sanity...

Hm... my kids aren't neat freaks by any stretch, but they can handle a bit of sorting. They don't like it when everything's all jumbled together, so they have separate bins for Lego, wooden blocks, wooden train tracks, stuffies, and dress up things. They do have one jumbley bin for random toys, but I've noticed they rarely play with those things.

But I agree that they tend to prefer to pay in the living room, so I've learned to live with the fact that painfully stepping on Lego is going to be a daily occurrence.

I'm not a big fan of the one-giant-toybox that seems to be popular in this thread. It's certainly easy to clean up, but I don't think it's ideal in terms of presenting the toys for children to play with. I'm all for mixing things together DURING play, but I think when they go away, it's important for things to be organized to facilitate finding things for play the NEXT time.

We have the lower bookshelves in our living room devoted to toys and try to just have about 6-8 out at a time (some with multiple parts of course, like a basket of plastic animals). We always have the play kitchen and related items out and always a box of blocks and a box of duplo (these go under the coffee table). My nearly-2-year-old has no trouble helping clean this up in the 5-10 minutes before dinner. As long as everything has its place and there's not too much to be overwhelming, having organization beyond a single box is definitely feasible. Order is really important to many children at toddler-age and they will naturally follow whatever process you lay out for how to put things away. Of course, different personalities will be more or less amenable to this, but it works for us, at this particular time. I suspect that older children might present more difficulties in keeping a playroom tidy than a toddler ... I think it's not so much capability, but willingness, that is key.