Recent theoretical and experimental progress on studying one-dimensional systems of bosonic, fermionic, and Bose-Fermi mixtures of a few ultracold atoms confined in traps is reviewed in the broad context of mesoscopic quantum physics. We pay special attention to limiting cases of very strong or very weak interactions and transitions between them. For bosonic mixtures, we describe the developments in systems of three and four atoms as well as different extensions to larger numbers of particles. We also briefly review progress in the case of spinor Bose gases of a few atoms. For fermionic mixtures, we discuss a special role of spin and present a detailed discussion of the two- and three-atom cases. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different computation methods applied to systems with intermediate interactions. In the case of very strong repulsion, close to the infinite limit, we discuss approaches based on effective spin chain descriptions. We also report on recent studies on higher-spin mixtures and inter-component attractive forces. For both statistics, we pay particular attention to impurity problems and mass imbalance cases. Finally, we describe the recent advances on trapped Bose-Fermi mixtures, which allow for a theoretical combination of previous concepts, well illustrating the importance of quantum statistics and inter-particle interactions. Lastly, we report on fundamental questions related to the subject which we believe will inspire further theoretical developments and experimental verification.