Gigi, I'm totally in love with your steiner description...although I fear we've already passed much too far over to the plastic dark side to ever get back there!!! BUT...I must say, going thru DD2's toys, most of them are pretty "basic" in the play sense.. eg, a big tub of coloured wooden blocks (lots of sizes) and a few wooden people, animals thrown in, a big tub of wooden train track stuff, dollies & a smattering of clothes & blankets & scarves, a tub of musical instruments. Gee I would love to know how the tidy up song goes!!

Rumpled Elf, my DD went thru an extended patch of not playing with any of her stuff. It took me a long time to understand that she has no interest in anything that requires attention to detail (eg forget about craft, etc), she is essentially a social creature and much prefers hanging out with family even if she's not "doing" anything.

Lulu the cradle with the drawer underneath sounds brilliant! DD's getting a cute wooden cradle for her birthday (my latest op shop find hehe) but nothing so clever as that.

Sounds like I'm already doing similar to what everyone else is - tubs on shelves or drawers. Which should be easy. BUT I think the *real* problem is that if anyone besides me packs up, bits from sets get left out and not sorted back into their proper homes, they get lobbed into the toy cupboard (yep we actually have the luxury of a whole cupboard!) and then the whole thing goes to pot.