To mix up all the Lego into one big storage box?

[deathbylego]

The space sets, the police trucks, the three-in-one robot/dinosaur/sports car/propeller plane sets, the power mining underwater Atlantis space star wars stuff.

At the moment all sets live in their own clear boxes, in various stages of completeness (none really, actually complete). This means I cannot clear up the Lego, as only DS (8) knows where it should go and what piece belongs to what set, and this causes endless arguments. He has no organisational impulses whatsoever. The boxes are everywhere, and I feel my blood pressure rising as sets that should stay together become scattered. His room is a tip, boxes everywhere.

DH is horrified that I want to mix up the sets. But I am itching, ITCHING, to just dump it all in one big box and have done with it. I can feel my stress levels lowering just thinking about it. Then I could just say, 'Tidy up, DS', and he could toss it all into the Big Box. Done.

Please may I? I promise to keep all the instruction booklets.

Once the sets have been built it only takes a few pieces to fall off and go missing and it's ruined, ruined forever I tell ya. If they can't be arsed looking after the sets themselves then mix, mix, mix it all up. Let them loose and design their own masterpieces.

Yes! Surely standing on a lego brick with bare feet is just as much part of parenting as and and . Maybe not so much if you wear a , but still...

Absolutely hownoo. I can guarantee that all those "completed" sets in the plastic storage boxes are missing several small-but-essential pieces.

And surely even has felt the sharp edge of a Lego brick in her foot??

In theory, ours are in the original boxes, which are then stacked neatly in big storage boxes, & another box for 'orphan' bits.

In practice, we have half a dozen 9l Really Useful Boxes for random lego, & lots of half empty, ripped original boxes.

The only person bothered by this is dh, who actually can pick up any tiny 30 year old brick & tell you whether it was originally his or his brother's, & which year it was acquired. BIL & I have tested him. He really can, the sad git.

Dh is, accordingly, quite welcome to sort the lego any time he likes. Until such time, I'm going to carry on shovelling it all into the nearest box!

You're going to burrrun burrun burrun burrrrun ahhhha hahahhahahahahha

We used these:

wonderful little storage drawers from IKEA. If you feel really creative you can take a picture of each different colour block, laminate it then stick it on the front.

Or you can just sort the colours into little drawers then keep the instructions on a file - or just use the iPad.

Makes the storage and clearing up of lego sooooooooo easy. Also makes finding pieces easier than having to dig through a huge mixed up box of lego.

All Lego should be in a big box. I though it was the law.

Our MO has always been that they have two or three days to build a set and then I throw away the instructions and mix up the pieces. I hate the instructions to be honest. It is like the difference between paint by numbers and learning to compose your own still life IMO. I love Lego can be such an open ended creative toy that encourages the process as well as the product, but that can really be lost if you use someone else's creation.

We also have lego from when I was little, that has long lost the sets and instructions and pieces have been vaccuumed up, we have been given pieces, we have had stuff from charity shops and various bits have been turned into school projects and never seen again. My kids live.

oh and we use the medium sized trofast tubs.

(the pink and white ones in this unit, only ours are boyly colours -- www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/S19873974/ )

We have maybe five of them full??

DH has a lego app that is fantastic, it has lots of instructuons that show you how to make lotss of different things, the other day he made a shuttle and launch pad from his castle lego.

His lego was all sorted when he took it from his parents house for DS but I eventually convinced him that it had to all go in one box for my sanity I now have to listen to the terrible noise that is the 'lego rattle' on a daily basis, as he searches for pieces to make stuff for himself DS. DS is 2.

See, it's funny how people are different!
We are of the all-in-one-box persuasion, and find keeping sets together odd. Sets are only about a squillionth of the fun of Lego. You can be much more creative when swirling all the bits about in a box and finding odd bits and bobs to stick in your space zoo/ pirate prison / zombie castle / whatever

We use the Trofast from Ikea. Separated by type and colour with little laminated labels on each box [wheels, people, grey tiles, green blocks, instructions, light brown special parts etc...] but then I'm sad!
My kids wouldn't play with it if it was all in one big box. They have shelves in their bedroom to keep the 'precious' things they have built (death star, ninjago temple etc...), but everything else ends up in the boxes.
Good Luck ;)

All of DDs is in one big box. She rarely builds the sets again after the first few times and prefers to build whatever takes her fancy.

We were lucky enough to get a huge huge bag from the charity shop which contains all the batman and batcabe sets. She happily uses the jail sides for house fencing and so on.

The only things kept separate are the mini figures and their accessories as she often just spends time putting them together.

The last 30 mins before bedtime is tidy away time. Even 16mo DS3 tidies his toys away before he goes to bed. I make them start to 'help' tidy up as soon as they can hold a toy ( literally, by holding them over the toy box and waiting until they drop the toy in).

Start them young, and theoretically, they're tidier. except for DS2, he only tidies under duress, even at nearly 9yo, and sometimes I despair of how messy he is!

It worked for 3/4 of my DC, a reasonable success rate. But DS2 now 'gets' that Iftar rule is one toy out at a time, and it's put away before a new toy is played with.

Mine are all very good with board games, and you'd be surprised how many pieces some Monopoly games have, and my boys are almost as obsessed with Monopoly as they are with Lego - we have about 7/8 different versions of Monopoly, and there's always one version on both DS1 and DS2's 'wish list'.

ravenAK. I am the same as your DH wrt knowing where each brick comes from, what set it's from, and how old it is. Even worse, so is my DS1. And I can easily see DS1 needing an extension just to house his Lego.

The one day trip he has asked to go on in the Summer Holidays? To the Lego shop in Westfield. He has saved all his Christmas money and his birthday money, and has over £100 burning a hole in his pocket!

And for those who are missing that essential piece from their set DS2, I'm looking at you., Bricklink is excellent, just Google them. Far cheaper than EBay.

We have boxes. DS doesn't have that much Lego yet and his sets are actually hidden away as he is more interested in playing with the basic Lego, which is all in a big box on his table. But I could not imagine throwing it all together. Instructions have their own box too!

All in one big box here, DS (5) and DH (36) have no problem creating whatever they like

do it! Ours was all in one box as a kid, half of the fun was looking for the pieces we needed! Though we didn't really do the sets as much, in fact we didn't even know we had the sets until my Mum wanted to sell them so we had to make them up for her!

DS1 puts all those sets together exactly right the first time, plays with them for a bit and then breaks them down and into the lego pile they go. He makes so many interesting things.

I think following the instructions has been quite good for DS1. It means he is really good at building quite large things because he has some idea how to build them strong.

We have a couple of Lego Heads which seperate the bricks by size and also a box that has everything in it.

I wouldn't be keeping them seperate in boxes. Madness.

My Dh insists that the lego gets all mixed up together. He says the whole point is that they use their imagination to create things rather than just following the instructions to put a kit together.

I have two children, 4 years apart.
When Harry Potter lego came out, DD loved it, made each set piece up carefully and admired it, played with it nicely, put it on shelves, added appropriate extra buildings... yadayadayada.
DS looked on with lust and rummaged in his own lego. He didn't understand why she wasn't playing with the lego properly, she made the models to the specs and kept them like that.
Time passes and my girl decided that she's grown out of lego and was prepared to donate hers to DS. As in give.
So she told him, he was delighted and she carried her models into his room for him to play with.
It was like watching Taz on speed. He had those models dismantled and reconstructed and adapted and embellished and mutated within an hour. She was horrified and bewildered. Took her ages to calm down and realise that his way of using lego and hers were light years apart, and that she'd given it to him and so had no say in it now.
DS keeps his lego in storage boxes, millions of unsorted bits. He can locate any individual piece within five minutes, however minute. He constructs complicated models and dismantles them without a thought.
DD winces occasionally when she spots a gargoyle or a bit of Gringots in one of his chimeras.
Upshot of this OP is that you need to store it how your DS likes his lego.

I used to keep it all in separate boxes but then I lost the will to live and put it all in one box. If the sets haven't been made at all (As some haven't from Christmas!!) then I leave them in the boxes.

I just ensure I keep the instruction manuals so if ds1 wants to rebuild the sets he can do.

I am sooooooooooooooooo evil dd's are nearly 10,9 and 7 - they still only have duplo, a huge amount in a huge underbed storage box. I had to sort and sell various sets to reduce the collection to just one zoo, just one house, the airport etc.

Never will I easily permit the move to grown up lego

We/I tipped all ds's sets into one big box.

It had started so well. He only did one kit at a time, then put them on his shelf/dresser/desk/wardrobe. After approx 2 minutes a bit would get knocked off or the whole thing would at which point the thing would be put in a drawerr waiting to get mended. Pieces got put in a safe place and eventually there was more lego in the drawer than on display and in the tub.

I snapped and he now has approx £400000000 worth of kits in their component parts in a huge box, a drawer with instructions in and a lifetime ban on new kits!

YANBU.

We/I tipped all ds's sets into one big box.

It had started so well. He only did one kit at a time, then put them on his shelf/dresser/desk/wardrobe. After approx 2 minutes a bit would get knocked off or the whole thing would at which point the thing would be put in a drawerr waiting to get mended. Pieces got put in a safe place and eventually there was more lego in the drawer than on display and in the tub.

I snapped and he now has approx £400000000 worth of kits in their component parts in a huge box, a drawer with instructions in and a lifetime ban on new kits!

YANBU.