Got Lego? Got a mess?

One family’s success with Organising their Lego

A guest post by Alana Phillips

We have a LOT of Lego. It all gets used by our sons, who are 10 and 6, every single day. We have probably a couple hundred sets, as we are Lego and Star Wars maniacs, and also we were fortunate enough to inherit a HUGE amount of Lego from a family that moved back to Korea and weren’t able to take any of their Lego with them (sacrilege!).  Recently we lived in a tiny 2-bdrm apartment so we had to get VERY organized with the Lego!! So, here is what works for us:

We have 5 towers of storage drawers, with a variety of large and small drawers. We’ve sorted all the Lego by COLOURS, so each drawer has a colour (red, blue, dark blue, yellow, beige, clear, lime green, dark green etc). Some of the colours have more than one drawer (eg we have one whole tower just for black bricks). Some of the drawers have more than one colour (eg there seem to be a bunch of different shades of dark brown, and light blue, and we have one drawer for one-off colours like pink, purple etc that we have very few of).

We also have separate drawers for special things like Wheels, People, and Accessories (things Lego people use like cups and hats and light sabers), one for Knights Kingdom stuff as Mr 6 likes to keep those separate.

Note – We used to have the Lego pieces separated by types of bricks (like flat pieces, long bricks, connector bits, triangular pieces, round pieces etc) but we found that even though this made it easier for the kids to FIND pieces they wanted, it was way too hard for the kids to re-sort them when they were done, and my partner and I ended up spending entire weekends re-sorting Lego. Now that it’s by colour, the kids are doing the bulk of the re-sorting themselves. Hooray!!!

We have one big plastic tote that we call The Sorting Bin and everything that needs to be put back into the colour bins gets thrown in there during the week.  We do a big Sorting Day once every few weeks. This is also where any bits of Lego I find around the house go too. 🙂

The kids have some sets that they’ve made and we keep them on display on a bookshelf in their room.  Eventually they’ll play with them and the sets all fall apart and then they lose interest and I come through and chuck all the bits back into the Sorting Bin.

For the directions (or “maps” as we call them), we have two file folder boxes each with a label by theme, eg Mars Mission, Star Wars, Agents, Harry Potter, City, Racers etc. Any maps get filed in the appropriate folder. We have one box for Star Wars (which Mr 10 has further organized by movie) and other space themes, and one box for everything else.

We also have an old trundle bed frame (like this) that is on wheels, and which sits on the floor in one of the boys’ rooms for them to make Star Wars bases or Lego city scenes in. It’s perfect for building on as it’s a hard flat surface, and the little walls keep the Lego CONTAINED!!

And that is our Lego success story. Would love to hear any other great tips and advice for storing Lego.

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When not sorting Lego, Alana Phillips is a photographer who creates beautiful, whimsical portraits of children in nature.  www.alanaphillipsphotography.com.