Lego. It’s every boy mom’s life saver and yet bain of her existence. The middle of the night, boys’ room navigation, tucking someone in or saying a prayer for a bad dream, tip-toeing back to the door and CRUNCH. YEEEOOOOWWW! Hopping up and down on one foot, trying hard not to shriek, biting your tongue to keep back the exclamations. Yeah, I love Lego, but I HATE how it’s always all over the floor, ALL OVER THE HOUSE.
I have struggled with keeping restrictions on the boys, not wanting to squelch their creativity or play areas, but we’ve landed on some pretty firm rules that I’m comfortable with. One is that Lego stays IN THE BEDROOM. You may bring down a set to show us, play with it, but then it MUST return to the bedroom afterward. I cannot stand the Lego spread taking over my house. Sorry if that sounds strict, but with a soon to be cruising baby on our hands, it is a hazard zone I just don’t want to create.
This still leaves the problem of the Lego spread in the bedroom. For the longest time we’ve had this great Ikea trofast with labeled bins for separated colours and pieces.
Once a month we’d dump all the bins and reorganize. None of us really seemed to mind (though I definitely carried the lion’s share of the work). However, over the past couple months of busyness with summer, we haven’t been doing it and no one has really missed it.
My dream Lego organization is something like this – which wouldn’t be too difficult to make, but we just don’t have the space for it right now. And the separate bin system has been more frustrating than ever for clean up as the pieces lay out on the floor because the boys don’t want to take the time to figure out which bin to put them back into.
Growing up, our Lego organization was a long, flat rubbermaid filled with pieces. Now maybe it’s just because I’m a girl, but I hated sifting through all the pieces finding what I needed. However, in talking with some grown boys who grew up with the same method (hubby included), we’ve decided this is the “organization” route that is going to work best for all involved.
So last night I dumped all the separate Lego containers into one big under-the-bed bin (with one separate one of the specific castle pieces they have). And I tell you those boys were dancing with glee at the prospect of not having to organize the bins monthly. So was I actually :D
This might not be the best method for everyone, but it will work for us for now and will make the daily clean up a whole lot easier! On that note, anyone want to buy an Ikea trofast storage system? :D
If you have Lego in your house, how do you organize and contain it?
