Lego Organisation a Cautionary Tale

When Will plays with his Lego he likes to find specific pieces. Generally these are guns, other weapons or pieces of the minifigures. He doesn't keep the mini figures intact most of the time- sometimes he even pulls the arms off... this drives me and Kieran bonkers. 

We used to keep the Lego in a big underbed storage container but he could never find what he wanted so he's tip all the Lego over the floor. This drove Les Bonkers.

You might note Les' 'Bonkers' has a capital B. My bonkers is frustration expressed by a large sigh and generally feeling a little grumpy in my head. Les' Bonkers is loud and angry and angsty... like "Why is this kid doing this to me? I'm sure he just does it to piss me off " sort of Bonkers. So I set out to solve Les' issues by solving Will's issues. And indulging my love of organisation and categorisation.

First I brought one of those oversized Lego head sorters. You know the ones that have three levels of 'block sieves' and the smaller parts fall right through to the bottom. These are USELESS. On their own as a tool completely useless. As an aid to sorting the Lego or a place to store it while awaiting sorting it's an ok investment.

So then  I got these divided containers from Kmart. At first I thought I'd sort by type/size.... do you know how many types and sizes there are??? So then I used a combination of type/ with colours. Regular rectangular and square blocks are sorted by colour and small and large. Everything else is sorted by type eg; heads, wheels, body parts, studs, windows etc. There are also a couple of lunch boxes for the large one off pieces like a truck bed, helicopter cockpit, and monsoon bucket.

I sorted all the bricks (the first time took forever!!!) and then photographed. Printed the photos large twice and then used clear book covering to attach them to the top of the boxes inside and outside.

Then I stacked them up on Will's table.  You will note that all of the containers sitting on the table not stacked would cover the whole table.

And those shelves where they are stored take up a lot of table real estate. As does the box which has all of our Lego kit building books. (I should just put that away).

When you are six you tend to want most if not all of those containers open- or at least off their shelves, a lot. This leads to whole containers falling off the table and losing all their shit in one go.

When you are six your arms are all over the place and your elbows knock pieces off the edge of the table all the time as well.

When you are six you lack the ability to put things back where they go. Ever.

When you are six you make something and then get bored with it and move on to the next thing, leaving the first thing on the table or possibly knocked onto the floor.

When you are six you pull ALL of the heads out of the head section in order to determine exactly which head you want to use.

When you are six you quite simply don't appreciate the precious time and effort it takes to maintain a system like this if a six year old is the one using it.

 

So here's my best advice for the parents of six year olds: No Lego ever. (I'm joking... mostly.)

And here's my second best piece of advice: Use a large under bed storer, don't give a toss about the mess and buy your husband some chill pills.

Seriously, keep away from Pinterest all the organisation looks great- but any system is only as good as the person using it's ability to maintain the system. And if that person is six years old their ability is zero. The same goes for four and five year olds. And I suspect it will hold true for 7 and eight year olds. Nine year olds know better than to tip out a whole underbed storer full of Lego because they know that their parents know that they are perfectly capable, even though unwilling, of picking it all up again.

And if you make a system like this for anything but the most obsessive compulsive of 9 year olds (think Sheldon from Big Bang Theory) then they'll probably just ask you for an under bed storer to put their Lego in.

♥