Monday, April 25, 2016

Ultimate Lego Storage

Let's take a minute to talk about Lego's.  They are fantastic!!  Aren't they?  Here's the problem, at least at my house.  My son is 7.  His absolute favorite toy is Lego's.  He gets them for Christmas, and Birthdays and for doing extra chores around the house and...you can see the problem.  He has so many sets but for a long time we haven't had a good way to store them.

We live in a small house.  No basement, no extra bedrooms or a playroom, and not much closet space.  Our kids have to keep their toys in their bedrooms.  Most of their toys are packed tightly in their closets.  Toys & clothes & shoes all kept in a tiny closet.  We've tried storage bins and a toy box, but things still get jumbled.  Then there is the issue of trying to keep Lego sets together. 

Honestly here is our Lego routine.  My son gets a set of Lego's, builds it once, then I try to put it in a zip lock bag with the instructions, but somehow most of the Lego's end up in a little blue container in his closet with instructions floating all over the place.    He has tons of Lego's, but it seems like every single time we go to the store he is begging for another set.  (Don't worry, I usually don't give in).  I couldn't understand why he kept asking for more sets when he already had so many.  Then it sort of occurred to me...trying to build something when you have to dig through hundreds of Lego's to find the right pieces was a daunting task, especially for a little boy.  It was easier to just get a new set.

I decided to find a better way to store his Lego's.  I found tons of great ideas online, but our space is limited and I really wanted to keep each set together.  I remember when my girls where little we used to keep a lot of their toys in containers under their beds.  I found a big flat container made to fit under a bed.  It had wheels and was light enough for him to lift.    Once I had the big container I went in search of some smaller containers to fit inside.  Our Walmart happened to have pencil boxes for less than a $1 and they happened to fit perfectly inside the box. 


I pulled out all of his Lego's.  The storage bin we already had some in, every instruction booklet I could find, every set still in a box, and also those in zip lock bags.  At first it didn't seem too bad.


Not bad right?  Ha!!  You would be amazed to know how many bazillion Lego's fit inside that blue container.   I started by laying each booklet out.  Then I went through each booklet and found all the pieces to make that set.  1 hour turned into 5 turned into 2 straight days of sorting Lego's.  2 days.  Think about that.  If it took me that long to sort these Lego's, think about how long it would take a 7 year to build something with all of his Lego's jumbled together like that.  Frustrating right?!! 


After 2 very long days I was done.  Each small container holds one set - pieces and instructions.



As soon as I was finished, I had a happy little boy busy putting together each set, then cleaning up and putting that set away before moving onto the next.  He kept saying how cool it was.  Now I have a happy boy and a happy momma because the Lego's are finally, finally under control.  Plus we have plenty of space for more sets in the future so this storage will work for a long time with his growing Lego collection.



As a side note, the large container was about $17.00 at my local Walmart and each pencil box was $1.00.  The large container can hold 28 pencil boxes.  So this project cost me just under $50. 


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3 comments:

  1. That is awesome! I wish I'd thought of that. I don't think we have many of the instruction books anymore and my kids don't play with legos now. I keep them though cause I'm sure I'll have grandkids one day that will love to play with them.

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  2. Thanks so much. Luckily we kept most of the instruction books. We do have one of the containers with just random Lego's. But that's part of the fun I think.

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  3. This is a fantastic idea to be honest. One of the most organized Lego storage systems I've seen to be honest, especially if you're the kind of person who likes to keep LEGO as a particular set instead of in loose pieces. Takes a bit of creativity out of it, but at least you'll be able to keep everything in its proper place!

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