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!

My only 'rule' is to keep non-Lego separate from real Lego!

In my house its me that's the lego fan. I'm sure I drive everyone else insane but the fun is having it all mixed up and create new things

You would be other parents favourite person if you hosted regular playdates/ informal lego clubs 😂

I find the best storage boxes are the big, shallow, under the bed storage boxes - much easier for rummaging. The drawstring mat works well for this too.

Don't keep sets together but do keep instructions so they can be rebuilt if desired. Lego instructions are so well clear and well designed they almost justify the cost IMO. It can be a good, calming activity.

I do recommend sorting however. Sorry. It took me FOREVER (and may well remain my greatest life achievement) but has been so worth it. Sets are easy to rebuild if all the tiny pieces are in one place, flat bits another, technical bits another etc etc. Equally creative play is so much easier if they know exactly where to find that slope or teeny coffee cup.

We liked the shallow under bed storage boxes, plenty of space to rummage without tipping everything out. They had a few of these boxes from IKEA which were used to keep some of the small hard to find bits seperate out. They just sat on top of the rest of the bricks in the main box.
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/glis-box-with-lid-yellow-blue-90466155/

For building we had a tuff tray, for us the sheet /drawstring bags never quite worked as they never seemed able to keep it flat while building. Tray was harder to store, but did at least keep the bricks contained.

I keep sets together as my ASD daughter can get stressed if sets are not complete (she builds so fast I sometimes think we are missing pieces and I get stressed out on her behalf - but she already has them in her hand or in place 🙈!) However because of this I've been able to resell sets for good money. Have made about £700+ selling on Vinted. Encouraging my other daughter to sell some of her Harry Potters sets - of which there are many. Neither interested in building creatively! I had one biscuit tin of Lego and I built the same house over and over I loved it!

My DS builds his sets and never takes the best ones apart.

They're on shelves all around his room.

The only ones that have come apart are the city build type ones and various other less favourable sets when he was too young to care.

He does have a few large boxes of loads of bits and pieces.

I think when Minecraft first came out he became obsessed with building his towns and things in there and watching YouTube videos of people building stuff.

DS is older now but I think I might well get him a large Lego set to build over the holidays. He'll like that

If any sets were taken apart it just meant he was over that one and would never want to rebuild it hence not breaking any apart he held dear.

If he doesn't like looking for pieces you can sort by type. My son has a lego storage unit made from ikea mini drawer units stuck together and painted. So there's a drawer for wheels, one for minifigs, one for doors/windows, one for 4x4 squares, one for 1x1 etc etc. Because he loves building his own stuff it's so much easier to find the bit you want. (Sorting by colour looks pretty but is useless)

Unless your son actually wants to remake a set there's no need to try and keep sets together. A friend of mine does that, each set is stored in its own Tupperware. Having seen her tell her 3 year old he's doing it wrong when he put all the windows of a bus in a tower I conclude she's really missed the point of Lego being about creativity!

Have you seen the app where you take a photo of some Lego pieces and it suggests stuff you can build?

Sorry I can't remember what it's called but friends have raved about it.

we have a LOT of lego. all my childhood lego plus the same again gifted to DC.

It is stored in a set of about 20 cardboard shoeboxes organised by colour and by function (e.g. people / wheels / connections / red brick / yellow bricks etc). that works well enough that kids rarely need to tip a box out to find pieces, you can just search within each box.

Also a set of 4 shelves for completed lego models (kits or homemade). If a new model needs space on the shelves, a old one has to be deconstructed. that's the rule.

since we set up the storage box system, the kids play with the lego more but it also stays tidier - good for everyone.

I hear you...I used to try and keep sets together and like others say, just realised it wasn't to be.

We have this storage from IKEA, and the lego is sorted into colours (reds & purples, yellows and oranges etc..then separate drawer for people / animals) Each child has a drawer they can keep their models in (limits how many models you can have / means they periodically have to take one apart)

They both have ASD so I always take photos of their models, and have them in a special folder in my phone. Seems to make it easier for them to take the models apart if there is a photo of them to keep.

We keep all the instructions in a zip bag thingy...they'll spend ages going through each of the drawers to find all the pieces they need!

On the quantity...aargh. I've had to get really firm with my family about not buying it. It hasn't worked...my brother is vicariously living through his nephews!! 😆

I would have been that child who'd have got great joy out of putting all the right pieces in all the right boxes after everyone else had made a big mess of it all

Would have kept me entertained for hours.

Don't try to keep sets together, that's no use for building. We have boxes with sections from Ikea and have pieces sorted by type so you can find what you need. Not down to the level of 2x2 in one section, 2x3 in the next etc, but more like a section for hinges and joints, a section for studs not on top etc. Then a big box of plain bricks, a box of bigger plates, a box of smaller plates, a box of slopes etc.
If you do want to build a set then you can gather the pieces from these boxes. We have a big box of minifigures and accessories which isn't sorted because that's what gets played with every day.
You also need to have a box for assorted pieces for when you don't have time to put things away properly. I find it a relaxing in-front-of-the-telly activity to sort them all into their sections but I appreciate not everyone would agree.

We have vast amounts of Lego in our house, as another poster has said we could probably build another house with it!

DS hasn’t played with it for a couple of years now but we are in the position of wondering what to do with it. We didn’t keep it in sets but I did try and sort by colour and size for awhile but gave up!

DS is planning to go to university in September. DH and I were wondering what we will do as empty nesters and we can see us playing and sorting the Lego 😂 FIL has rediscovered Lego in his retirement

Don't bother sorting it.. Chuck it in a bag/box and key him rummage

We have tons of Lego too!

DD likes to build sets, so I keep hers all sorted into boxes with pieces and instructions (I use clear sandwich bags for smaller sets, and have Samla boxes from IKEA- for a big set I'll use an individual box; for smaller sets I put them in bags and then several bags in a box).

DS just loves making random stuff, so his sets are all mixed into one big box, and he has strict instructions not to take pieces from DD's boxes.

If he wants to make one of his sets he just has to find all the bits himself!

(my sets, obviously, are kept well out of the way and no one is allowed to touch them)

Am I the only one still - many hours later - looking fruitlessly through reams of bins on Amazon looking for unicorns made of grey fabric with yellow mats inside?

I wouldn't sort it for him. Either he keeps it sorted or it isn't sorted.

You either just need to throw it all in a giant box or unleash the kragle. There is no in-between.

The fact that even Lego themselves spent a lot of money making a film about how the parent trying to keep it organised is bad tells you how you should 'do Lego'.

Totally recommend a drawstring playmat. Open it out to search for the pieces on... then close it up as a bag of lego not in use!

This is my son's Lego collection. He's 21. At university. Hasn't built anything in years but won't contemplate selling it. Sets all mixed up but I did gather up all the mini figures during lockdown 🤣. Please send help - or suggestions...

In the 70s we had a really fancy Lego storage system. Apparently it is these days quite an eco solution.

It was a cardboard box. That slid under the bed.