To not be able to cope with lego?

[SayMumOneMoreTime]

Now don't get me wrong, I love lego, it's a brilliant toy for all the reasons we already know.

My 6 year old loves building new sets, and also inventing his own designs. We encourage his interest, especially using his existing stuff creatively.

The issue is the quantity! Grandparents buy him new sets because that's what he asks for, and he saves up his £1 a week pocket money and buys his own. He is obsessed with new sets.

All the pieces are mixed up, I have tried in vain to organise and keep sets together so he can rebuild them. It feels like I need a week of annual leave to complete the job! Everything gets mixed up (my 3 year old has just this minute tipped out 4 of the 9 trays all over the bedroom floor) as soon as any progress is made with sorting.

He will not hear of giving it away, and it's a mess anyway so no good for a new owner without being sorted.

How can I manage the lego levels? If you have a lego obsessed child how do you manage the quantity? Should I expect more from my child in terms of sorting and buying less?

Help!

I have an ASD son who has had Lego as his obsession for the best part of 10 years. My house often looks like the Lego store was burgled and I think we actually have enough of the stuff to build a 3 bedroom house 🤦‍♀️

However, it brings him endless joy and is played with every single day. He still buys new sets whenever he can and I see no sign of this stopping. When they are dismantled and enter ‘general Lego’ use we have large grey cylindrical shaped fabric bins from Amazon. They have a large yellow mat attached inside so when you want to look for pieces you tip the whole bin out straight on to the mat for easy looking and building, then when it’s time to tidy up, you pick up the mat and it slides straight back in. Genius! They have a lid and fit perfectly in an IKEA kallax cube. He has ceiling to floor kallax in his room to house it all and display his current favourite models.

Hope this helps 😊

You have to just Let It Go mentally. Honestly I’ve lived your frustration and mentally I’ve just had to park it. They use the playmobil more and that stuff makes sense to me so my advice is to try and move your child’s interest onto some different over priced plastic 🤣

Oh, forgot to mention. We have a separate bin for minifigures, dinosaurs, animals, dragons etc and their paraphernalia as they are the most played with pieces 😆

We have 2 big plastic bins (thigh height) plus 3 sets of 3 x plastic drawers FULL of Lego.
We’ve never tried to keep the sets together, it all just gets scooped up to be tidied away. DS is now 18 and it’s still gets sorted through occasionally and things built. He doesn’t want to get rid of any of it, it’s his stuff so his choice.
There must be ££££’s worth of Lego in our house. I’ve never tried to limit it, it has brought him a huge amount of pleasure over the years, DH loved building things with him when small too, they have lots of happy memories of building things. All instructions are kept together should he ever wish to sell at a later date.

I have honestly never thought about trying to keep sets together, that seems like a waste of time and energy and also not the point of Lego. I had lots of Lego as a child and part of the fun of rebuilding something from a set was needing to sort through everything to find the pieces, maybe making alterations as I went.

Op the aim has to be keeping a lid on quantity of it
And keep it separated by theme.

Or you end up with far too much and specialist parts cannot be found.
I have a love / hate relationship with it.

You have to let it go for your own sanity! My DS is 15 and still buys the occasional set. We have thousands of pounds worth of sets in the loft and his room.
If I'd had my way we would have glued it all together like in the Lego movie 😄. But I gave up a long time ago trying to sort or police the lego playing or buying, and I'm so much happier for it!
No idea what the future holds for the sets we have but for now they are happily gathering dust in various locations.

@Crazyducklady can you link to these bins? They sound interesting.

@SayMumOneMoreTime just give in. I also have a child who builds sets and then dismantles and turns them into different things. I gave up trying to fight it so now we keep the dismantled trays in large stacking plastic storage boxes. They are wide and shallow so the Lego can be sorted through without tipping out. I live in hope that one day he'll become obsessive about sorting the Lego and then he can have it all divided by type.

If he grows out of it, I'll just donate the Lego to my local primary schools as they'll make excellent use of it. But I do see people selling it just by the tub as mixed Lego, it gets sold that way.

This does help - thank you. I'll have a look at those bins

Does he want it to be sorted? If it’s a muddled up then leave him to it and he can build whatever he wants.
If he has a specific set and it’s build following the instructions then when the time comes to put it away then you can put it in a plastic baggy with the instructions. But if he is taking it apart and adding it to the heap of bricks - that’s his choice.

This. The point of it is to use their imagination and create new things.

These are not the responses I expected tbh 😂

I honestly thought there would be a secret way to manage it. I'm actually very relieved that it's unanimous to just accept it! A weight off my mind. I think I often feel guilty about the 'waste' especially since it's plastic. Obviously I will reframe it now, because ALL the toys are plastic, and at least lego is fab.

Thanks so much for making my Sunday brighter and more relaxed 😂

I would encourage use as I think it's really good for children's brains. You do need a good storage system though!

Btw my child does not like looking for pieces, but I will encourage him to start enjoying it!

We tried sorting the stuff by set, by colour, by theme - you name it. It made an enormous amount of work. Now it's all in a massive Really Useful box. Kids seem to prefer it that way and it's much much easier to tidy

A slight tangent perhaps but don't underestimate the second hand market for random bits! We recently went to one of those 'brick fest' Lego exhibitions. There was a section that let you fill a pint size cup with whatever you wanted from a range of random boxes for a few quid. Kids and adults alike were spending ages filling their cups. (For example some adults were looking for any brick they could find in a particular colour.)

DCs picked up the most random stuff and it's kept them occupied for days! I don't know how the stall owner obtained the stuff but it's good to know there's so much opportunity for a second life.

(I too have had no choice but to get over lovely sets not staying in one piece!)

Re: the plastic waste, Lego lasts forever. DS plays with my 40 year old Fabuland Duplo when he goes round to my mum’s house, it is still in perfect condition.

So worst case scenario you can sell it or pass it on to family when your children grow out of it.

Lego floor storage bags
and possibly see-through small storage box with lid, if child fancies sorting through the characters/ wheels/ and keep a few things separate.

But ultimately, The point of it is to use their imagination and create new things.

I saw some people gluing lego builds, which I find really depressing.

My DD loved lego as a child until she was about 12. At 13 she told me to get rid of it all because (in her words) it’s babyish.

Last month she expressed her regret at getting rid of it all- her joy when I told her that I still have it all in boxes under my bed made me smile.
At the grand old age of 19 she is looking forward to sorting and rebuilding it all during her summer break from uni ( during her free time when she isn’t working). If it makes your child happy, I would certainly recommend keeping it- even if you only allow a limited amount out at a time and rotate the boxes.

I have piles and piles of stuff.

An enormous storage box full - maybe 70l size?

At the moment it's in the shed.

At some point when I am done with it I may give it to the of the sen lego clubs as I think there are some around.

I tried sorting into sets to sell and it was too painful. I pondered selling in bulk but I just got v cheeky offers and I know the will split into into kg bags and sell on eBay for far more.

We have vast (and I mean really vast) amounts of Lego. It’s sorted by colour in 10 litre Really Useful Box trays, with a separate one for minifigures and their accessories, another one for wheels and track, and bigger boxes for black, white and grey pieces. The winter village sets are packed away separately but everything else is in the general
mix. Instructions are tucked away in the loft with the original boxes (flattened) and we just use the online copies of instructions on an iPad instead.

My eldest dd who it 90% belonged to has rediscovered her love of it but now favours the sets more to display. She has a set of the flowers and also the Lego typewritter. This was a gcse present and she has used it to get a break in the evenings. Unfortunately she has got through it quicker than the exams so it's currently sitting awaiting the last bag to be built next week as a finishing exams present to herself!

You need to get a display cabinet or a bedroom shelf to show off some of his greatest masterpieces!!

The more in the cabinet, the less on the floor!

Even if he decides to dismantle some of them over time, he won't do it all at once.

If he wants to rebuild his sets after the first time, then he keeps the sets together himself. He’s old enough to be able to do that. And if he can’t be bothered he can just invent stuff.

I went through a phase of "sorting" but he was quite happy raking through big plastic storage boxes (the under bed sort of shape). He always loved a new set, but made some of his own fabulously detailed "working" creations by splitting them up. I must admit I'm secretely pleased he has suddenly stopped. He's 12 1/2. He was doing £120 (plus) sets in a couple of hours, and I really don't want to be spending £350 etc. He's never once wanted to rebuild a set. Really beloved ones are displayed, others are broken for pieces. Just go with it and hope he gets sick eventually.