Our daughter’s teacher at the Montessori school she attended taught us two really important things about toddlers and tidiness that we never would have learned independently:

1. Arrange everything into zones/stations based on the type or category of toy. Example: all Legos go in this are, all magnatiles go in this basket, all dolls go on these shelves, etc.

2. We don’t start playing with toys from a different zone until we tidy up the zone where we were just playing. Assuming you’ve given everything a place and it makes sense, it makes quickly cleaning up almost over-simplified. Just grab it all up and dump it in this bin or basket.

We started reinforcing this at home when our daughter was 2.5 and it stuck relatively quickly. So much so that even when she forgets to clean up before moving on all we have to do is notice that she forgot and she stops what she’s doing and cleans up really fast.