Yes, you can be tougher and tougher. I don't recommend that though. Try putting yourself into her place. If you didn't want to do something, would your husband take away your things?
Imagine that you had a room you didn't want to clean up. Are you overwhelmed? Is there too much in there? Then put things out of reach. Don't have her able to get things out. Really. You can have a 'one thing back before another comes out' rule.
Maybe she would like to be the overseer and tell you where things go. Yes, you're doing it, but as a first step, she is thinking about what's out of place and where it goes. We do that with my son and eventually he'll spontaneously start to do something and act like he's done it that way all his life. Four is young to clean up an entire room. It's okay if she's not there yet.
As far as the whining, I would really try to find out why she is crying and whining. Take the time & make guesses, be calm and really want to know. Maybe there's something there that you would rather know about. That being said, sometimes I swear my son whines because he likes to hear the sound his voice makes. In that case, a simple "do over" or "try again" or even me restating it in a good way does the trick. However, be patient and really try to see what is her issue. It is setting a great dynamic for her to come to you with her problems. One day the problems will be important and then she will be used to you being an adviser and helper.
I learned a great technique from my son's teacher. She will say something, ask what it is, ask what it isn't and then re-ask what it is. This repeats & gets the message across to this age group. For example. "We're going to the store. Are we going to buy any toys?" (nooooo) What are we NOT going to buy? (toys) Will we buy some dolls? (nooooo) Will we buy some Power Rangers? (noooo) What are we going to buy? (food)" You can put some funny things in there, like old socks and stuff as well.
When you're going through this, take the time to work through the protests here and almost always they won't come up in the store. You may need to repeat the beginning question, but she *should* catch on. Otherwise, time your store trips when someone else can watch her as much as possible for awhile & avoid the battle.