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If you have children and more than one LEGO set, then I am willing to bet you have scoured the internet for LEGO organizing ideas. Chuck and I both played with LEGO as kids and have been thrilled to pass that love onto our children. Because we believe in the value of this toy, we have bought many, many sets over the years and plan to buy many more. Each set that comes into our house, however, magnifies our need for organization.
We have tried a few different LEGO organizing ideas in the past. For a while we used three-tired plastic drawers. These were stored in the boys’ room…which meant for the girls to play, they had to go in the boys’ room and this caused endless fights.
I wanted so bad to have a beautiful LEGO studio like this set up for my children. But the thing is, we live in our house. I needed to find a way to organize our LEGO that worked with our home and our family. I have learned from experience that in our family LEGO gets played with more and for longer if it is in a central area…in this case our living room. I started by finding a place to store them…I cleared out two shelves in a large shelving unit from Ikea. I then measured to inside to find out exactly how much room we had.
While the outside measures 14 inches, the inside is only 12 inches. These were a bit smaller than I thought when I ordered them, but they ended up working perfectly.
Next, I looked at nearly every storage bin out there until I settled on these Sterilite bins. I chose these because I like the latch (no spilling LEGO), the size (14 inches) and because they are stackable and modular. I started out with two six packs and then ordered a third when it was clear I needed more room (for a total of 18 bins).
I also ordered one set of four deep Sterilite bins (these are twice as deep as the standard ones) and one set of four small bins. Since they are modular, they stack perfectly. A must for LEGO organization.
We chose to sort ours by color. We have enough gray that it fills two of the deep bins! One deep bin is filled with black and the other LEGO Bionicle and Hero Factory pieces. We also decided to keep wheels and axles together in one bin.
In another we have windows, doors, fences, etc. The 12×12 base plates barely fit in the bins. I took this picture to show you. We do not keep the plates in there, but they are almost always in use anyway. We use another one of the bins to store our LEGO instruction books.
The small bins contain our: mini figure pieces, LEGO Technic pieces, teeny-tiny assesories and tiny rod/axel connectors. How did I decide which pieces to separate? I observed how my children play with LEGO and tried to make the pieces they search and search for easier to find. They especially love being able to find those tiny connector pieces!
You might be wondering…but can they maintain this system? The answer, yes. Taking apart creations and sorting the pieces only takes a few minutes, compared to the initial sorting. And, I am not interested in perfection. Anything is better than two huge drawers filled with random LEGO pieces.
We always, always have LEGO creations outing our living room. We use a train table we purchased from Pottery Barn 12 years ago. It is always covered with their latest creations. The platform they are using in the top picture here? That is an trundle bed Chuck made years ago. It is the size of a crib or toddler mattress. It is on wheels and contains the “overflow” creations. We don’t always have it in our living room, but pull it out as needed.
This bottom picture shows what our LEGO set up looks like in the context of the shelf. You can see how easy it is to access the pieces. Close the doors, and the bins are no longer visible.
What are your best LEGO organizing tips? For more LEGO inspiration you can follow my LEGO Pinterest board.
{The LEGO you see pictured here are the family LEGO. Most of the kids have their own collections, that they keep in their rooms.}
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