Lego Day

Legos.

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I love them. I love that they require some brain power and creativity. And I love that they are pretty much indestructible.

I also hate them. I hate them when I step on them in the middle of the night. And I hate when they are scattered all over every room of my house every single day.

But in my case, the sacrifices are worth it. Legos are the one toy that all my boys love and will continually play with.

So imagine this. Four boys. And all they want for every birthday and Christmas is Legos. Ten years later, that equals a lot of Legos. And by a lot, I mean a bajillion. So how to organize? Google/Pintrest-searches for “Lego organization” pop up with fifty cute ideas. But here’s what’s worked for us.

I liked the idea of shallow bins, because they don’t require as much digging. So I bought the Trofast storage unit from Ikea, with nine shallow bins. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79102958/

I decided to organize by color, because organizing by other methods just seemed too difficult. Since I had nine bins, we combined some colors and had extra bins for wheels, minifigures, Bionicles, and boards.

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However, I know myself and know my kids and know that we won’t put all the Legos back in their bins every night. So I also have a big basket that goes in their closet. When we have to clean up fast, all the Legos go in that basket.

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Then, during the summer, we have Lego Day! I make this sound really fun and awesome so my kids are excited for it, but then I laugh to myself, because really it’s the day that we separate and organize our Legos.

This literally takes all day. My kids help, and play, and get excited to find minifigures that have been buried for months, then help some more.

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To make the day special, we break up the sorting with other activities. Here’s some of the things we’ve done over the past couple years:

  • Make Lego shirts – buy cheap white T-shirts, print out a Lego guy template, and have your kids use fabric markers or puffy paints to trace the Lego guy on the shirts. Then they can color them in and decorate them!
  • Listen to “Everything is Awesome” (the song from The Lego Movie) over and over and over. Because it’s awesome.
  • Watch The Lego Movie
  • Have a Lego car making contest and race them down a slide
  • Make Lego crayons by using the same molds you use to make chocolate. Preheat oven to 250. Gather old, used crayons, peel the paper off, and break into small pieces. Place crayon pieces in the molds, then bake for 10 minutes or so, until the wax is melted. Allow the crayons to cool and harden, then pop them out and start coloring!

And then at the end of the day, the Legos are sorted and you take a picture because it looks so beautiful. And even though over the next year, the bins slowly empty and the basket in the closet fills up, I still think it’s worth it. Organizing the Legos allows the kids to find the pieces they want and makes creating things more fun.

How do you organize Legos? Have any other fun Lego Day ideas?

 

 

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Stefanie Hohl
Hello Pittsburgh moms! My family moved to Pittsburgh for my husband’s medical training eleven years ago. We loved it so much, we decided to take a job here. I stay home with our five kids – one daughter and four boys. Yes, they are crazy. Yes, my life is chaotic. But it’s also lots of fun. When I’m not driving my kids to music lessons or swim practice or trying to get my 3 year-old to sit on the potty, I study and write. I have almost completed a Masters of Education with an emphasis in Children’s Literature. I write books for children and am working on getting published. I also run Storytime at the Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley. Oh, and I draw pictures and tell funny stories about my kids on my blog: www.stefaniehohl.com. But above all, I like to eat brownies. Out of the pan. Late at night.