Lego storage - what do you do??

[noireallydonot]

It's driving me up the wall!

I will buy anything, anything at all if it will solve our lego storage problems.

DC are just reaching the stage where we have quite a few sets and I can't work out how to store them. Store by set? Altogether? By piece type?

DC still quite young so they want to look at the big pile of pieces to figure out how to build their own creations but then they'll announce they'd like to build one of their sets so DH searches through the pile for an hour picking out every tiny piece according to the neatly saved instruction booklets. This is not hiw we envisaged the first hours if Sunday mornings as the kids grow up!

Please, to restore serenity in the household, tell me the best ways you know to store this stuff.

Want to have it sorted before 🎄 when we will no doubt be inundated with more lego!

We started off putting it back carefully but dustpan and brush and a stacking crate is where we ended up. All the tiny pieces end up at the bottom so you tip the crate out onto a playmat and rummage.

It’s left assembled and I look at it in despair.

Funnily enough IKEA has a Lego collaboration of storage items for kids....

www.ikea.com/gb/en/new/play-never-stops-with-the-bygglek-collection-pub1955e4c0

Outside of that, this seems to be the go-to solution:

www.ikea.com/gb/en/new/play-never-stops-with-the-bygglek-collection-pub1955e4c0

I've given up with it. It's all dumped into a play mat with a drawstring and shoved under the bed.

^This should have been the second link!!

In one of those big clear plastic boxes with a cotbed sheet folded on the top. DD (4) spreads the sheet out then tips the box out so she can see all her pieces. When she’s done, we pick up all four corners of the sheet and tip the lego back in the box. We have a couple of small tupperware boxes in the big box for the really teeny tiny pieces so she can find them when needed.

The giant lego brick storage was a game changer here, no we disassemble every night and it all gets broken down and put away or it all takes over otherwise! All sets are now bundled together as they tend to overlap in use these days anyway...

Drawstring playmat for general stuff.
One of my DDs likes keeping stuff together. One has barely finished building before she's adapting it into something new. Ill help look for a specific piece if asked, but younger dD has learnt not to touch elder DD completed sets without permission.

All in one crate. She was responsible for finding the pieces herself.
She did not fully dissamble the sets, so most of the pieces were together. And she had a random case, so she could build new things if she wanted.
I only ever helped her to build some of the larger sets first time.

We have an underbed storage with wheels and keep the precious sets separate in these boxes

I've got this problem but with playmobil rather than Lego. Most of which is blinking tiny! I spent today sorting it into categories, people, animals, food, furniture, big props/equipment, small props/equipment. I put each category into a see through drawstring bags like these... All the bags are then shoved in kallax units. Could equally be in a box under the bed.

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B085ZFS3VK/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_apa_fabt1_xOySFbBHP7X10?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

You put 2 trofast back to back and screw together to make a big square table with drawers. You then accumulate more lego and have to line the room with kallax. Kallax 2 by 4 on their side means you've got the cubes to store made models and the top to play on or leave a set up like hogwarts or a street of modular buildings.

The drawstring playmat is best in my opinion - easy to tidy up and easy to rummage for pieces. At work we have a trofast unit with nine drawers and we started by sorting by colour, but most of the time the kids aren't bothered about the colour of the brick, the brick shape is more important, so we started sorting by brick type. In reality all the bricks are muddled up in the trays, but the trays are a bit small to rummage around properly.

@PeasNotBeans @theneverendinglaundry you made me smile

Thanks all. Not sure i can bring myself to spend thirty quid on a drawstring bag but looks like we might have to.

Like the ikea boxes but worry we'd need lots!

Like the cot sheet in a big box idea, I have lots of those in the attic! And maybe some small boxes in the big box.

I live in fear if vacuuming up a key single dot piece!

@PeasNotBeans

It’s left assembled and I look at it in despair.

Same

OP I got mine from Ebay, I'm sure I only paid £7 for it! Take a look on there

The drawstring bag is great, I got mine on amazon, can't remember how much but it definitely wasn't £30

I actually bought lots of small storage containers from wilko and sorted the lego by colour. THAT was a MISTAKE. Huge mistake. It took me ages and was muddled up again within days.

I would like to have all the set pieces separated somehow, but I just cant face the thought of rooting through the mound if bricks ro find each piece. I follow This Girl Can Organise on Instagram and she recommends some great zip up wallets to use for lego, Playmobil and puzzles.. I'll try to find the link

My dc still like to plays with the sets, and after the 100th time of being asked to help build set x or y, I went through all the Lego and portioned it into the sets. It took weeks.

Each set is now in an Ikea sandwich bag with the booklet inside.

We do have loose Lego from non-sets, and that just sits in a Trofast (ikea) tub with the bags on top.

Here we go www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WV95K7B/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabt1_Z2KSFbEFD2PA0

Gratnells boxes. The things schools have for storage but which are available from lots of places at reasonable cost if you shop around. If you get the smaller ones with lids you can stack them. And a shelf round the top of the room for completed dragons/spaceships and the like.

We've got old school tray units (like Trofast) for loose bricks, but also just got some of the IKEA Bygglek boxes to put scenes or sets into.

We've made shoebox 'rooms' for Playmobil, but am stuck with the very big structural items!

I sorted all of DD's into bags by shape, rather than colour. Then there's a bag of wheels and a bag of miscellaneous bits. These are then kept in our Kallax. She helped me do it and so far it's all stayed in the right bags.

She's got lots of sets as well, and those are stacked on these non-Lego shelves, which just about work. These are on the window ledge in her room which works for now... although there's no more space for the bigger sets that she hasn't built yet, and I have no idea what we're going to do with those!

They're like these ones: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01HKNACH0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_3tTSFbQ3MWA00