Mimi and Ozzy are big Lego fans. Ozzy, maybe more so, than Mimi. maybe it's because there more 'boy' themed Lego's than girl themed ones? perhaps that is why Mimi enjoys the more open ended brick building than Ozzy, anyway? our Lego collection has been slowly growing, but even when we just had a few 'kits' i began thinking of how to keep them sorted so one collection didnt get mixed in with another. Though Mimi would be fine with a giant bin of mixed Legos since she likes to make her own creations anyway, Ozzy, who likes to rebuild from each of the kits, required that the Lego's be organized.
I found a simple, inexpensive solution at my local Ikea. a simple frame and bin system. the frame was $14 and each drawer was $8 for the shallow bins and $10 for the deep one. I added some labels to each bin, separating the different building collections the kids have. i found these cute frames online and used them to create a border for each label and just added images i found online for each set. there were only 3 colors for the frames, but i found i could change the colors by adjusting the color sliders on the Image Tools in Pages on my Mac (Word if you have a pc).
i put the Duplos in the largest bin on the bottom to make the heavy bin easy to access. the kids often just pull that bin out without removing it and play with the pieces. I didnt bother to separate the Duplo by theme because the pieces are so large and easy to find. besides, we dont have enough from the different collections to warrant separating. so there's a mix of Cars, Toy Story, Trains, Town, circus and horse farm and general building bricks mixed in). the other bins they take off the frame and play with the pieces on the floor. i've tried tables with them, but they prefer the floor.
The top of the frame is a removable square of lightweight foam core for the kids to use to set their works in progress on that wont fit inside the drawer. Inside each drawer are the Legos from one collection (pictured below are the pieces for the Cars collection). Also in each bin is a small organizer. the kind you use for sorting jewelry, craft beads, or tackle boxes. The kids have the über-tiny pieces separated out by color in the bins to make finding the little pieces easier when building from the manuals. In this particular bin, Mimi and Ozzy have also separated out the tires and wheels to make them easier to find. the instruction manuals are also stored in each bin, together in a plastic zippered baggie. the rest of the Legos are poured into the bins. the bins are shallow and wide enough that sorting thru to find pieces are easy (as opposed to bins that are deep, which make it a little harder to search pieces on the bottom without dumping everything out).
after playing, they dump everything back into the bin and return it to the frame. the rule is only one bin out at a time, so that keeps the collections from getting mixed up. it's been nice to have these portable bins as the kids like to take them to different areas of the house to build sometimes. and going to my mom's house to visit, it was really easy to just pull a bin and take it over to her house.
i only had to show ozzy how to slide the bins onto the little rails once and have him practice it a couple of times and now the kids can independently play with them without any help from me. the system has been working well for almost 4 months now without any issues. so far so good!
we had an extra bin left over, so just made that into a bin to hold the building plates and Lego train tracks for now. when the kids decide on a new collection (star wars? ninjago? lord of the rings?), we'll store them in that bin. i dont know where it will go beyond that, but i like the generous dimensions of these Ikea bins and would gladly buy another frame/bin set when/if we continue to expand beyond the capacity of our current one.
I found a simple, inexpensive solution at my local Ikea. a simple frame and bin system. the frame was $14 and each drawer was $8 for the shallow bins and $10 for the deep one. I added some labels to each bin, separating the different building collections the kids have. i found these cute frames online and used them to create a border for each label and just added images i found online for each set. there were only 3 colors for the frames, but i found i could change the colors by adjusting the color sliders on the Image Tools in Pages on my Mac (Word if you have a pc).
i put the Duplos in the largest bin on the bottom to make the heavy bin easy to access. the kids often just pull that bin out without removing it and play with the pieces. I didnt bother to separate the Duplo by theme because the pieces are so large and easy to find. besides, we dont have enough from the different collections to warrant separating. so there's a mix of Cars, Toy Story, Trains, Town, circus and horse farm and general building bricks mixed in). the other bins they take off the frame and play with the pieces on the floor. i've tried tables with them, but they prefer the floor.
i only had to show ozzy how to slide the bins onto the little rails once and have him practice it a couple of times and now the kids can independently play with them without any help from me. the system has been working well for almost 4 months now without any issues. so far so good!
we had an extra bin left over, so just made that into a bin to hold the building plates and Lego train tracks for now. when the kids decide on a new collection (star wars? ninjago? lord of the rings?), we'll store them in that bin. i dont know where it will go beyond that, but i like the generous dimensions of these Ikea bins and would gladly buy another frame/bin set when/if we continue to expand beyond the capacity of our current one.
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