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.

Not sure why pressure from other family who aren't living in your house would make you rethink what you want in a house if it wasn't on your radar to begin with. I agree with patricia about having living spaces on your main level be living spaces, and having a separate living space without a TV so adults can separate from kids but still be on the same level. I would make the office space your TV room (den). With doors. Kids toys could be in there too. Regarding the office, what does your upstairs look like? How many bedrooms do you have? If you have 4, you can easily convert one bedroom into an office. Most people respond to that by saying "but I NEED a guest room!" If that's your response, think about how often you have overnight guests, and whether you want to dedicate 144 square feet of your house to guests who will be with you a handful of nights each year (when you think about your house as a cost/SF, think about how much money you're spending for that dedicated space, and how many nights in a hotel it would take to recoup). I am planning on converting our guest room into a play room/guest room, with a murphy bed in the closet for the handful of times we have overnight guests each year. You could do the same with a guest room/office combo. Murphy bed or pull out couch or day bed for overnight guests.

Emily, no, we didn't have it with maple. My experience with it is it's a creamy off-white leaning warm-ish. I don't see why it wouldn't work with maple. The one thing I'm thinking is it can read fairly light depending on your lighting. We also used it for our exterior trim where it looked pretty much white. Inside it was just a soft, creamy white.

Fiona, ok. but you did ask how to work w/the "dark" playroom. you could bringing in more lighting if you're not willing to paint that room. How about if you leave that one wall that color, but paint the other 3 a nice white? Could that be a compromise? if you did something like this, and brought in a fluffy white rug, it would lighten up the space The red is a nice color w/the wood floors and ceiling, which I really like, but if you did the other 3 in the white, you'd be amazed at how better the room would look. tape off a lower portion for the chalkboard. btw, does the entire space have to be a playroom? do you want to divide half of it? maybe use a portion for schooling or office or a lounging/reading computer area? what if you painted that wall black, and did the other white, but brought in some red accents? The black wall w/the white book cases around it would look great w/all of the wood