How Do You Store Your Legos, You Maniacs?
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My youngest brother, Jace, is about fourteen years my junior. I’m the oldest; he’s the youngest. Interestingly, FishBoy12 is closer in age to him than I am. Jace was the original Lego Maniac, if there ever was one. His childhood infatuation with Legos is the main reason that I held off ever letting my children play with them. I had very real memories of injured feet in the middle of the night!
His love of Legos is still quite real. Lucky for him he has four nephews who are equally enamored with the plastic brick. But, he’s become very particular about Legos being cleaned up. Thank goodness! And I benefit from this OCD behavior now that he’s moved in with us. He makes the FishBoys clean them up before their wrestling matches. Hallelujah!
(True confessions: I just shut the door — and a blind eye — on the playroom.)
My friend Jessika is a wealth of creative, good ideas. She recently emailed me a list of great Lego-organizing suggestions. With her permission, I’ve turned her email into this guest post. Perhaps it will help you put some order to the brick collection at your house.
From Jessika:
Thanks to the many moms who gave me storage solutions for Lego pieces and creations. I worked on organizing most of our Lego in May. I still have some work to do, but a friend warned me it may be a lifelong issue! At least we have a plan in place so everything can be put away, and my feet have been spared stepping on those sharp corners because we’ve used some of the great ideas listed below.
Some great storage options to tame the Lego Madness:
- tall plastic storage towers with drawers that can be completely pulled out
- sewing/beading boxes to sort out the smaller or more prized pieces (like swords, scuba tanks,heads and bodies,tiny tools) or to sort Legos by kind, ie regular, girl, technic, etc
- one giant plastic box for all the pieces and room for creations on top of them
- a tool box
- a tackle box
- homemade Lego bags – use heavy duty fabric cut into a circle, attach brackets and thread cord through them so it can be a play mat and then cinched up and taken back to the closet or storage area. These can also be painted to match a theme for the particular Lego set it holds.
- under bed, shallow, flat storage containers
- IKEA Gles or Trofast storage
- bookcase, dresser or high closet shelf to store special creations away from younger siblings (OrgJunkie’s got a great one here.)
- accordion files to store the instructions that come with sets. Laminate the instructions.
- labelled baggies for spare parts from each set
- flatten boxes from sets and keep for reference
- a specific bin for pieces that have come off sets and need to be replaced onto the projects at some point
- a sheet for putting down on the floor when the kids are working so none of the pieces get lost – sheet can be picked up and pieces dumped back in a bin at the end of building time
- a bigger house with a dedicated Lego room
— Jessika Leonard is a crafty mom of two children.
How Other Mamas Do It:
Like Merchant Ships
Laurie @ Create Your Own Experience
What do you do to store Legos at YOUR house?
We use Ikea Trofast, but the flat ones that stack.
They are in the closet in my boys' room stacked one on top of the other.
There is also a smaller collection in my girls' room.
Of course we have the all over the floor, and on top of the dresser creations too. 🙂
Great idea! I really have been thinking about getting my uber-creative daughter a bunch of legos so I'll use this for sure.
my generally "store" their legos all over their bedroom floor. very happy to just shut the door. too much work!
I store my boys' Legos in plastic storage boxes and put them in a bookshelf in the game-room.!
back in the day my brother and i use the same kinds of boxes from michael's that my mom stored her beads and embroidery floss in. we liked to sort out all the special legos (like the flowers and the lights and stuff)
Finding a system to store and sort Legos has been an ever-evolving project in my house.
First I attempted to keep the kits together with each kit in its own box complete with handle and lid, but then at clean-up we couldn't tell all the sets apart.
I tried to consolidate kits to group types of kits together, but still it was a challenge at cleanup time.
A few weeks ago I switched to using some shelves with open bins, sorting pieces by color, except all the people, who have their own box. This way anyone can help cleanup and the legomaniacs have even found that it is easier to build when they just look by color.
So, far, we have found a success for us.
It looks like you have a bunch of other great ideas listed… I especially appreciate the lego sheet idea to prevent stray pieces from getting lost.
Thanks! Great post. My 8 year old is really into Legos lately and they've outgrown their current storage container. Since the baby will be mobile soon and will be sharing a room with him, I need a workable storage method. I love the ideas of laminating the instructions and using a sheet on the floor.
My son is in love with Legos too! I bought him a rubbermaid tote to put them in. It works great because his little brother can't open the lid yet, so they're safe from little hands.
Fabulous list! I'm currently using the shallow underbed storage method and it's working great!
Here's how we store Lego under the bed when not in use.
I recently removed all the Lego as a consequence for my son's behavior. In doing so, I realized that we had given him too much, making it too hard to pick up and too hard to play with any sense of appreciation. Now that he has a simple set earned with his own money, he is careful to pick up the pieces and seems to enjoy playing with them more.
Anyone else find it as hard as I do to balance the fun of putting together a new Lego set with the growing pile of older pieces?