Lego organization and storage?

[twowhat?]

Can anyone share strategies, ideas or pics? We got lots of Legos for the girls' birthday. I love Legos. I hate that they all come in these kits that require parental help. While trying to help them put a car together, DH grumbled "How can this be ages 4+?" LOL. I had to explain that the 4+ was more of a "safety" thing than an "ability" thing:)

Anyway so since all these kits come with all these random custom parts (which is SO different from when I grew up and just had an assortment of bricks and a few key items like windows and doors and basically had to create my own things from scratch), how do you keep them organized???

Do you keep all the individual kits together? Or throw all the pieces together in drawers and have them just dig through and fish out stuff they need? Organize by types of blocks? We need a solution to the Lego madness here!

[kristac]

They mingle here. I set up a system like this: http://pinterest.com/pin/45669383691681244/ and sort the bricks by color. Sadly in real life they are mostly scattered on the floor and the dinning room table/chairs, under the bed, in beds, etc etc <grumble grumble> There is also a large bin to throw everything in when I go all crazy mommy on them and demand they clean up since I don't enjoy walking on legos.

Good Luck to you Momma. Wear shoes.

[ahisma]

We build the kit and then toss it into the bins when it falls apart. We could dig through to find the pieces but never have rebuilt something. There are a few special pieces that are on the shelf (space shuttle, Back to the Future DeLorean, etc.).

We have a three drawer thing that we got at Target. Top drawer is tiny pieces that otherwise get buried at the bottom of the bin, middle drawer is special shaped pieces (anything not tiny or standard rectangle/square), bottom drawer is the standard bricks.

When they were all in one bin the kids could never find the tiny pieces when they were making their own creations. Once, after a trip to the lego store where we bought at least 50 steering wheels at the pick-a-brick wall, DS couldn't find a steering wheel. That was my clue that the one bin system wasn't working - the 3 drawer thing has worked great.

[nfowife]

Lay -n- go. Love it.

[Seitvonzu]

i am the wrong person to ask! are you talking lego friends? my little daughter is OBSESSED. i try and keep them separated for her because she will rebuild--for a while i kept them all in their boxes, but that got to be sorta ridiculous. i do try to keep each set in an appropriately sized ziploc with it's parts. it's far from perfect, because even though she likes to rebuild things, she also likes to "create" it's a chaotic system that makes this pieces stay together mother a bit crazy ;) actually...i'm now thinking i should organize legos while i watch sunday night television. (god i'm crazy :):))

[elephantmeg]

once they are built they stay built a while and then eventually they break into a thousand pieces. DS has thousands and thousands of legos. His are separated into big blocks (4x4's and bigger), skinny's (1xwhatever), thins, transportation (what he uses to built planes and cars), people, and then 2 tubs of misc. On a week to week basis stuff just gets thrown into the misc boxes and evey now and then we sort those back out into the main categories.

[nfceagles]

They mingle here. I set up a system like this: http://pinterest.com/pin/45669383691681244/ and sort the bricks by color. Sadly in real life they are mostly scattered on the floor and the dinning room table/chairs, under the bed, in beds, etc etc <grumble grumble> There is also a large bin to throw everything in when I go all crazy mommy on them and demand they clean up since I don't enjoy walking on legos.

Good Luck to you Momma. Wear shoes.

Our system is a lot like this, except we have three of those sterilite drawer units instead of the opening in the middle for a chair and I am philosophically opposed to sorting by color. ;) Our drawers are categories such as Technic, 1x's, 2x's, small pieces, sloped pieces, wheels and wheel-related, mini-fig and accessories, train pieces, instructions, chunky specialty pieces. We also have a large flat shallow box where unsorted stuff and works in progress can be slid under the bed. Like other poster's have mentioned, DS builds kits and eventually cannibalizes them. I've got no interest in trying to keep kits together. That would prevent DS from combining cool specialty pieces from various kits into his own creations.

[♥ms.pacman♥]

Lay -n- go. Love it.
:yeahthat: LOL, love this!

We only have Duplos in our house (thanks to DD who would eatregular Legos :)) but we will be getting kids "real" Legos for Christmas. We keep most things in a toy organizer like in the link below, which we really like. but in reality, the pieces are all over the house - kitchen floor, playroom, etc. I'm assuming with the little Legos it is just going to be worse! I hope that means they will hurt less when you accidentally step on them, bc d*mn stepping on a Duplo hurts like a mofo :)

http://www.target.com/p/tot-tutors-deluxe-wood-organizer/-/A-10627480?ref=tgt_adv_XSG10001&AFID=Google_PLA_df&LNM=%7C10627480&CPNG=Kids&kpid=10627480&LID=PA&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=10627480&gclid=CJTH24aWvbkCFXBo7AodLkAAtg

however i'm sure with little pieces thta regular Lego has we will use more of those thin stackable containers (look like clear briefcases that open up) that Lego makes (i've gotten them from clearance at Kroger, plus they usually come with a free baseplate).

We have two big Lego buckets with wheels on them (one for each DC) and like PP said they don't work well bc you have to fish through a ton of pieces just to find a piece they want.

anyway, IMO there's no easy way to keep all the pieces for every set together. The kids must have 10 duplo sets and while i try to keep stuff sorted to a basic level (pink cupcakes legos in one, train lego in the other, construction set lego in another) it'sj just impossible to keep all the pieces for all the sets together. Luckily my kids aren't really into making the exact complete sets as described by the instructions (at least at this age) they usually tend to use them to build their own things.