One projects on my 20 in 2020 list that I was excited and VERY ready to have done was getting Luke's Legos organized. He has a lot of Legos. I knew that but I really realized it when I was cleaning up the table to do this post. I'm not sure why we keep buying him MORE sets. Actually, I do. Lego keeps making cool sets and we are the suckers that keep buying them. Although there is a growing number of sets that Luke has saved up money to buy on his own too. Also, this isn't nearly all the Legos in the house. Matt has a china cabinet display filled with his Star Wars sets (many gifted by me) and I have a whole tub in the basement of all of my disassembled sets from childhood that I have not yet seen fit to share with my kids. I am very precious about my Legos.
Luke's Legos have mostly lived in Matt's office since Sam was big enough to move around, so for almost two years. Hypothetically this is to keep Sam out of the Legos except that Sam knows how to open the door and he's not really in an "eat all the Legos" stage anymore. Although Luke is also rather precious about his Legos and doesn't like a little brother getting into them. At least having them out of constant view does keep them off Sam's mind a little more and he really doesn't get into them much. When he goes in Matt's office he's much more interested in going through my fabric stash to drag out the remnants from his favorite blanket and "night-nights" (burb cloths, kid doesn't need a burb cloth but they are definitely his comfort item of choice. He never sleeps without one.)
Two years ago I had the bright idea that Luke and I should sort all his Legos by color, which we did over Christmas break, and then we could rebuild all of his really cool sets (read: Star Wars, mainly) that he had gotten and since destroyed. We did that, it took awhile. Then I started pulling pieces for one set, realized it was taking forever, and Luke was impatient enough that he rebought the set with his own money. Still, the pieces stayed somewhat sorted into boxes until this summer. Then, Matt and I had finally had a plan.
The plan went through a lot of variations but this is where it ended up after a lot of discussing and expanding. We bought six baskets from Target (these and these, please don't add up how much we spent just on baskets for this...more than a few Lego sets worth). Matt had leftover wood for pretty much the whole thing (Matt collects wood like Luke collects Legos) and so our only other expense was wheels for the bottom. We even used leftover paint from various projects so that was free too! The base blue was even a reject for our bathroom walls (literally how I had it labeled "reject bathroom paint") that was deemed not white enough for the walls. I was excited to finally have a use for it!
Let's take a tour (just don't look too close at the sorting...I cleaned it up a little but we are mostly relying on a 7 year old to keep this straight)!
The top smaller basket is minifigs and their various accessories (besides all the ones on display on the top and with other sets in another basket).
Under that is "special pieces", mainly ones we don't want getting lost in the abyss of general pieces. And under that are car parts and some windows and doors.
The top long basket is overflow for assembled sets and other things Luke has made. Almost all his sets are Star Wars or Marvel. Kid likes what he likes.
Under that, the middle long basket, is the general pieces. There are a lot. Luke learned the hard way that this basket is heavy when it was pulled out a little too far. Don't worry, toenails grow back. The bottom basket is some boards and other large pieces/things he's made.
Matt painted different backgrounds for a few scenes on top and Luke was especially delighted when he realized it looks like his jet skis are backing into the water. He has a little knowledge of that! I didn't realize until after I took the pictures that the jet skis are on the trailer backwards, we all know better than that at this point and DO drive our jet ski right onto the trailer when loading it up. (As it currently is, in our garage as Matt repairs the drive shaft. I now know what a drive shaft is!)
And that's it! This seems straight forward and the final result is, it just took a lot of discussing and measuring and me saying "It's HOW BIG?!?!" once I saw it in the house. It does just barely fit between my craft storage (to be fair: I share my office with coats and a vacuum and various other family used things too) and Matt's desk, almost like it was made to fit there (it was). Next to impossible to open the window without moving it but since we've opened the window about three times in the 14 years we've been here (and two of those days were to air out the room while the top paint was drying), I think we'll be ok.
For now, Luke has plenty of room to organize his Legos, until Sam is big enough to have his own Legos and we have allocate some baskets to Sam too. I am delighted every single time I go in or even walk past Matt's office and don't see Legos all over the floor. Obviously sometimes there ARE Legos all over the floor but keeping them more out of the reach of a little brother is pretty good motivation for keeping them cleaned up! Nobody wants to step on those in the dark!
Finding a good organizing solution to another part of our house makes me so happy.
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