It is the time of year where many children will be receiving a number of new toys and for sure, some of them will be Legos! My colleague, Sherri Papich of Organize Your Life LLC was telling us about the "Lego City" that they created in her son's room and I asked her if she would share her story with us. Keep reading to hear about the process and see pictures of her son's room. It looks like so much fun!
As a child I had some Legos of my own, although it was only enough to fit into a small child size suitcase. My daughter also had Legos when she was younger but stepping on them with my bare feet during the middle of the night and having a baby and worrying about the choking hazards was enough for me to say "That's it!". So she didn't have any Legos past the age of 9 or 10.
As my son grew, he started out with the large Lego style blocks and graduated to the many multitudes of small Lego pieces. When he was seven, we received two 2' by 4' totes filled with miscellaneous Legos. It took me about two weeks to think about what I wanted to do with the overwhelming amount of Legos. Finally, I put a large blanket on the living room floor and started the sorting process. At first I used piles and shoe boxes and other small sorting containers. My son helped me mostly by telling me where to put the piles. Since he was the one that was going to have to find the pieces, he gave me the ideas about what pieces belonged in what piles, hinged pieces or vehicle pieces for example.
I sat on the living room floor and sorted every night during family tv time. I made sure to put my misc. boxes of piles in the same place every night to make it easier to remember where each piece went. After a while I was a sorting machine!
I left the banket and boxes in the living room for the good part of two weeks. Whenever I had company or wanted to vacuum, I just moved the boxes and picked up the blanket. I washed the blanket a few times because it caught all the loose crumbs of whatever was mixed in with the Legos.
Once I had sorted most of the Legos, I went to the local department store to see what kind of permanent sorting devices I had available and what would work. I decided on some Sterilite drawer carts with multiple size drawers, see pictures. After about two weeks of sorting, we put the pieces in the appropriate sized drawers and labeled them.
We started off with a child's train table for building but soon realized that it just became a catch all for Legos and was taking up too much floor area. We then decided on a small tote for non-sorted Legos and a friend of ours that is also a carpenter raised my son's bed, lag screwed it to the studs in the walls and added a fence and ladder. And under the bed, Lego city was born.
My son added a few clouds to the walls and built several buildings including a house, coast guard station complete with water made from blue paper, tropical island and body shop (where they make Lego people, not cars), a automobile shop and a construction site to name a few. As it should be, Lego city is always under construction and the small tote is the only one allocated for miscellaneous pieces. Once it has been filled, it is time to spend sometime together to sort and file.
All Lego projects will be different as is every organizing situation. Have fun and include your child in the sorting process as much as possible. Never be afraid to think "ouside the box" (which we do not keep). A 3" binder with clear vinyl ring pockets for each instruction manual makes it easy for him to flip through and find the booklet he wants. We have also cut out a few pictures from the boxes which he wanted to keep and stored them in his binders. I have also added many shelves in his room so that he can show and store his many creations.
Sherri
