Start with zones, not with furniture
Lay the room out by species first and by convenience second. Put each enclosure in a zone with the things only that species uses: its staple food, its hay or substrate, its cleaning spray and cloths, and a small bin for its waste. Rabbit pellets, guinea pig nuggets, rat mixes, and hamster foods can look nearly identical once decanted, so keeping them in separate zones, in labelled tubs with scoops that stay in the tub, prevents the quiet feeding mistakes that happen in a shared room. Leave a working lane in front of every enclosure wide enough to slide out a base tray or open a full-length door without shifting the neighbouring cage.
Heights, neighbours, and who disturbs whom
Place prey species where they are not staring directly at animals they find alarming, and avoid stacking a nocturnal hamster's cage against a wall shared with a light-sleeping daytime pet if the wheel noise carries. Heavier, stable enclosures go low; lighter cages can sit on sturdy stands at waist height, which also makes daily spot-cleaning easier on your back. Keep enclosures out of the draught line between a door and a window, and away from radiators, because a multi-species room often has one hot corner and one cold corner and animals such as chinchillas, who cope badly with heat, feel those extremes first. A simple thermometer at each end of the room tells you whether the layout is creating microclimates you did not intend.
One kit per zone, one route for waste
Give each zone a colour or a labelled caddy holding its own dustpan, gloves, and cleaning cloths, and never carry soiled bedding from one enclosure across the clean bedding store of another. Work in a fixed order, healthiest and youngest first, dedicated tools before shared ones, and wash hands between handling different species, particularly after cleaning out an animal who is under the weather. Keep a lidded waste bin by the door and a laundry bag for fleece liners in the same place every day, so the dirty route out of the room is always the same short path. Food preparation, whether that is chopping guinea pig vegetables or measuring a degu's herbs, happens on one cleanable surface that is wiped between species.
Labels that survive tired evenings
Label enclosures with the animal's name, species, and the one detail a helper must not get wrong, such as a guinea pig's vitamin-rich nuggets or a rabbit who must not be picked up from above. On each food tub, write the species, the daily amount in the scoop size actually used, and the date the bag was opened. A small whiteboard by the door carrying that week's deep-clean order, water-bottle checks, and any animal being watched more closely keeps the room organised even when several people share the work. Photograph the finished layout once it works; when something gets moved during a big clean, the picture settles arguments about where it lived.
When the household, not the room, is the system
A tidy room still fails if only one person knows which tub belongs to which species or which rabbit is mid-introduction to a new hay. Talk the layout through with everyone who feeds or cleans in there, and update the labels the same day a food, bedding, or routine changes. The relatives you choose can open the animals' profiles in KinsLe Family Sharing, so whoever tops up the gerbils first meets the animals on screen rather than guessing from the doorway.