Lego storage ideas?

[SewingMom2many]

My 6yo is into Legos in a big way and now my 4yo is getting there too. They get these kits and make these elaborate structures and vehicles and they are taking over my house! I want to encourage it because 3 of the boys plus dh all play together and I think it's great that they are reading the instructions and following step by step to get to the end result.

 

I need to figure something out for storage where they can build and have it portable. They build on the kitchen table and then we can't eat breakfast, or lunch, they build on the dining room table and I can't fold laundry during the day and we can't eat dinner there, they have a Lego table downstairs but then I never see them. I'd love to figure something out that is portable so they can be in the middle of a project and move it from table to table or upstairs/downstairs when necessary.

 

Does anyone have any ideas? There must be something out there that would work but I can't find it.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

Maybe get a large flat board that they can paint and then glue down some of those big Lego boards. Then they could move the whole thing from place to place while they're working on creations.

 

My problem is where to display all the finished products.

[Mama_Rana]

I'm sorry, I'm unclear: are you looking for a way to store the built and in-progress projects, or the loose Legos?

 

As for portability, my mother made a huge drawstring pouch for our Legos using a double layer of the widest piece of fabric she could find, with grommets around the edge and cord run through so it would lie flat and then could be cinched up when we were done. The rule was that our Legos HAD to stay on the cloth, and be put away when we were done. Occasionally we would keep a creation on a shelf or something, but usually it just got put in the bag, and put away each time.

 

My son can't seem to understand the idea of keeping the Legos ON the fabric. :/

 

Perhaps you could use those wide but shallow under the bed bins? I like to keep the instruction books in a separate bag or bin so that they're out of the way when not being used.

 

As for storing creations... I saw something on Pinterest yesterday where someone had attached those plates to a 6 in deep shelf. But that's not portable. :/ Not sure.

[TheReader]

For loose legos, we store them in under-the-bed storage boxes. These are shallow enough that the boys don't have to empty the entire bucket looking for the right piece.

 

For building, they tend to go to one of their bedrooms and just build in the floor. If they bring it to the table to build, and we need to clean up, we just grab the lid from the lego box (the big under-bed storage box), invert the lid, and place all the in progress stuff onto that. Then we carry it to the bedroom and set the lid, still inverted, on top of the box. This keeps the in-progress stuff sorted, together, etc. until they can finish it &/or get tired of that project.

 

For finished projects that they want to save for a time, they have shelves in their room. Each boy has a tall, narrow shelf set where they can place their projects. They do have about 4 of the large base plates for building things of that nature, and they also use a lot of the pieces (at times) from the various lego board games.

[mom2scouts]

We have millions of Legos. We got a flat rectangular sandbox that slides under the bed. When my son wants to play, he pulls it out. We're not picky about sorting by color or style. A few of the large completed kits are on shelves, but most of our Legos are recycled into other creative building projects.

[Desert Rat]

I cruise thrift stores for old cafeteria trays. Projects in progress are on those. Completed projects are everywhere. We have a Mars Mission flying saucer hanging from the celing. I love the HP sets so they are in our school area. Both boys have them on bookshelves in their rooms.

For loose legos, I have 5 gallon buckets with nuts/bolts inserts. The pieces are sorted in to size and catagory. I have another bucket with big pieces and broken sets in bags waiting to be fixed.

HTH

[kroe1]

Since my oldest is over 30, and even my father had Legos, we have boxes and boxes. As a matter of fact, we have over 20 very large plastic storage boxes full of Legos. They weigh about 50lbs each! Therefore, what I'm about to advise will not be strange.

 

First and foremost, glue down every kit as it is built. This is because, once all the loose pieces end up in a community box, it is too hard to find all the pieces for that particular structure. As one collects kits through the years, there will be enough extra pieces to have plenty left over for creative building of one's own design.

 

:)