Lego Organizer

I asked a simple little question on facebook, “Should I organize the boys’ legos by shape or color?” and got a barrage of answers—most of which implied that I was being overkill in organizing Seth and Sam’s legos. “Just throw them in tub,” I was told.

However, these people don’t know my kids, and the amount of legos we were given. We were given a HUGE tub, and all the corresponding directions. And while Seth and Sam enjoy free building, what they love to do is build things according to directions—which meant I was spending hours sorting through this enormous tub to find a little 2 x 2 blue piece for their airplane. And when they were free building, within minutes their bedroom floor looked like lego vomit. Also, the big tub wasn’t the only legos I needed to organize: I then had their growing number of sets that we had recently purchased.

Call me overly organized, controlling, or pregnant and irrational…I don’t care. Legos were driving me nuts! So here’s our organizing process:

I decided on a 9 tub organizer from IKEA. I couldn’t be more pleased. Ben and the boys put it together, and then Seth and Sam helped me to sort all the legos by color. A couple people via facebook suggested that I make the boys part of the organizing process and they were so right! It was nice to have them be part of the process. That’s the easiest way to put things together, right Ben?

Now let me proudly present our after:

Don’t you feel your sanity returning in seeing how nicely everything fits into their closet?

Anything they are currently working on goes on top of the work bench

I put their newer sets in these shoe tub from Fred Meyer ($1 each). Now when they want to build a set with directions, we pull it out of this tub and sort it into their new lego carrying case (also bought at Fred Meyer). They now free build in their room, but then build with directions using their traveling case. I love having the traveling case because then they can build in whatever room we are hanging out in. Also, when company comes, or littler kids who may break what they are building, we put them up high were they can’t be disturbed.  Seth Sam

Call me crazy all you want, but now I LOVE the boys playing legos as much as they do. While we still all do occasionally step on that pointy lego, it’s not near as often. We also don’t loose legos that are part of the sets as much because of the cool travel organizers. You may wonder if we’ve been able to keep the free build legos in their room organized. It still gets messy (they build for about an hour a day in their during rest time), but, with the new color coded system, it’s so easy to pick up! I couldn’t be happier with our new lego system!