Give me your best Lego Organizing ideas!

[edurnemk]

Three years ago I spent many nights in a row sorting all of DS1's legos by color and putting them in bins labeled by color, but the system just didn't work out with how he builds. We have the big Nilo train table converted to a Lego table by adding the 4 Lego mats and extended legs and DS is constantly building things on his own and then having all the pieces scattered all over his table. It just takes way to long to go and clean up the extra Legos when you have to sort them into 11 different bins first! So now he has 3 large (43") floating Ikea Lack shelves on his wall to display Lego sets that he's built and wants to keep intact, then he has a bunch of built sets on his Lego table that he plays with daily and adds to, and then we have 2 large Container Store underbed storage boxes with wheels stacked up under his Lego table to store all the loose pieces. The underbed boxes work best because they are long and shallow, so it's easier to see pieces since it's not deep.

These are the under bed boxes we have:
http://www.containerstore.com/shop?p...bed+box+wheels

My best friend has a DS who is just 5 and is really into Legos right now. She keep all the pieces from each set he gets separate in it's own container with the directions so they can be rebuilt. Now this would never work for my DS who constantly builds sets and then takes them apart or adds to them with other random Lego pieces from other sets. Also, I could see how this would work if you have a younger child who has less than 10 Lego sets or something, but after 5 years of playing with Lego and getting 10+ new sets a year from birthdays and Christmas, this just wouldn't work in our household. This Christmas alone, DS1 got 6 new Lego sets from different family members.

I think most of the solutions mentioned also wouldn't work for us and just translate into more work for me! (that and more drama every night when DS has to clean up his room). We have a few medium clear plastic bins with lids from Costco. legos go in there regardless of color or shape. Then the bins go inside the larger canvas bins of his Expedit unit. Same fir playmobil, so we have a Lego bin, a Playmobil, bin, a car bin, and each of those bins has smaller clear plastic bins with stuff in them. I think the fact that DS has to sort and find the pieces he wants himself is part of the experience, LOL.Maybe when he's older and he can keep them sorted and organized we'll look into these systems.

[sidmand]

Sidmand, is the table top part from Ikea also? If not, where did you get it or did you make it? Thanks, I LOVE this idea!

We finally went to Home Depot and had them cut a piece to go on top. It's two pieces because there wasn't one that was long and wide enough. When it was a train table we cheated and had cardboard covering it with an IKEA play rug on top. That worked fine for trains but I thought it'd be too bulky for Legos.

[sunshineboy]

Depending on how many legos you have (and how much time you have, since this looks pretty involved), I really like this idea - http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com...-creating.html. I've also seen something similar with the bins underneath a play table.

I love this blog. thanks for reminding me of it!