Lego Mania

Have you ever tried to build something with lego and been frustrated by just digging around for the pieces you might need? We did. It felt like it took longer to find the pieces than it did to make anything. My husband decided to separate the bigger pieces by color after a night like this... 

 

We put them in ziplock bags and dumped them into a big box that we'd gotten. The box was perfect for just the bigger pieces but it overflowed when you added all the Legos we had into it. This is the box we started with - our neighbor had gotten 2 boxes as a gift and gave us one.

The best part of organizing the Lego is that the next morning, my 5 year old came down, pulled out all the bags, tossed them all over the floor, took out what he wanted, built his toy then - shocker - put all the pieces back into the bags, pressed the air out of the bags, zipped them back up, and put them all back in the box. What? That made it all so worth it. This is what he built. He called it Wormy and carried it around for a week.

 

But folks, that was just the lead-in ... THIS is what I really wanted to blog about. Take a look at my Lego Organization! 

Lego-Mania

 

i bought some boxes that stacked and (see the handle looking things?) they clicked on to each other so they can be carried as a group. Some of the boxes even had little trays inside to further separate into boxes. This allowed me to break them down by color and some by unique shapes. 

Mainly they were grouped by color according to the ones that had 'regular thickness' and 2 circles side-by-side. 

Here is a detail of the Yellow box. I wish this had a separator so I could keep the 2 circled pieces from the larger ones. 

 

   

(oops, I have a typo below, but its late and I'm too tired to fix it right now.)

   

Voila! My masterpiece!

I know... I call it organized, my friends are calling me uber-anal. But this is how the Legos have stayed, for months, even with my son playing with them regularly. 

So, yeah, I'm a little crazy. Yeah, it took a long time and a good bit of my Christmas break. But I LOVE it. :)

   

WHERE TO BUY IT.

TARGET: the stackable boxes that click into each other - 4 pack (was a bought at a post-Christmas sale and I haven't seen it again ), 3 pack with smaller boxes inside.

K-Mart/Wal-Mart: Baby Tackle boxes (top row), Medium Tackle boxes

Wal-mart: Largest tackle boxes (the ones that held the flat pieces)

How did we get so many Legos?

We started out with our neighbor cleaning out his aunt's house and he gave a couple of boxes to our friends. They didn't need that many so they gave us a big box. I love Lego so we were thrilled. We didn't really have any yet, so that was great. Then my sister got rid of all the ones her sons played with. That more than doubled our supple. Then, we cleaned out my aunt and uncle's home before they moved and they gave us about 4 giant box sets and the rest is organizational history. 

Over this Christmas, we did actually buy my DS some more sets. Don't laugh. But there is a new kind called Ninjago with dojos and other things from the Ninjago Spinjitzu show.