We've been experimenting with different storage ideas. Some of these may work for you depending on how many LEGOS you have on your hands, others not so much...
• We had the LEGOS in a basket, but whenever our son would look for a particular brick, we'd end up with a LEGO explosion all over the sun room. Dwell's canvas baskets are a lovely option. (Pic. 2)
• After the basket, we tried clear stacking drawers and then sorted the LEGOs by color. It worked for a while, but thought they were a bit of an eyesore. We used the Container Store's Translucent Mini 2-Drawer Chests. (Pic. 3)
• Finally, we decided that some wooden trays inside our entertainment center in the sun room was a good solution. And it finally occurred to us that rather than sort the LEGOs by color, it made more sense to sort them by shape: wheels all together; two by twos together; little people together. It makes clean up easier and the fact that it's inside a drawer, the LEGOs are nicely hidden when not in use yet easily accessible. We used some bamboo drawer organizers, also from the Container Store. (Pics 1 and 4)
How do you store your children's LEGOs?
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My oldest has just gotten old enough to take an interest in Legos. My parents are bringing my old Lego collection with them on their next visit along with the ingenious storage solution my mom designed back when I was in Garanimals.
It's basically a huge circle (say 3-4ft in diameter) of denim fabric with a heavy drawstring threaded through a seam around the entire circumference. You lay it flat on the floor, push all the Legos onto it, then pull up the sides and cinch the drawstring tight.
In the closed position (aka. storage mode), it's essentially a big Santa-style denim sack you can toss in the corner (preferably behind your Empire Strikes Back bean bag chair...yes, I know...awesome).
In the open position (aka. play mode) it's a big circular denim play mat with a big ol' heap of Legos in the middle.
Easy to make, infinitely customizable, highly versitile, and cheap as chips to boot.
Disclaimer: if you crave granular organization at the brick level, this solution will destroy your psyche. If, however, your kids believe, as I did, that rooting through a mountain of mismatched Legos looking for that one perfect piece to cap your latest creation is at least 50% of the fun... you will love this solution.
I was thinking about using the clear plastic under-bed storage bins. Then kids can build inside the bin, put their creations back in when they are done, close the lid and slide it back under the bed. I was worrying about our baby eating legos, because there are always two or three errant ones left out. I thought that under-bed bin would solve this problem. However, we are going with trundle beds now and this won't be a viable solution for our house anymore!
We store my son's legos in clear, easily accessible container, and we sort them by COLOR, wheels, people, and "bling." (Bling means any of those "special" pieces that don't really belong anywhere.) This has seemed to work the best for us, but I must admit that I'm the OCD one when it comes to sorting them. My son (age 6) could probably care less! ; )
So far, we don't sort them but I'm wondering if anybody has tried http://www.box4blox.com/.
We spent some time on this issue this weekend. My cheap fix was to buy some flat plates and put them on our train table and then purchase 2 clear/blue rubbermaid containers to slide under it. I spent $20 total but would like to get more plates. If I was going to spend some money on it.
I have an idea to take ikea trofast bins http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20087525 and use 2 as a base for the table. Then you could have a piece of plywood cut to fit over it and sand paint and put the flat plates on.
Another idea I thought of while standing in the lego store is the clear containers that you can choose your own legos are great little storage containers. They come in 2 sizes small and large and stack on each other. I did asked if they would let me buy the empties but the price is the same so either $8 or $16..
i have to say: that box4blox sounds awesome. would love to hear if it works.
Our play/craft table in the family room has essentially become a Lego table. I bought some small containers, much like the ones in the photo at the top of this post, and we sorted into; minifgures, little ships (we have a lot of Star Wars Legos), weapons and accessories (kind of like @kirwin's "bling") and droids (like I said, a lot of Star Wars!). The regular building Legos we keep under the table in a large clear plastic box with a lid. We do still have the Lego explosion now and then when one piece MUST be found, but in general this system works. If only I could get them to put the Legos back into the proper bins, though...
My inexpensive solution is Home Depot buckets. At $2.00 a piece I have many of them!!
www.cohabiTOT.com
We are currently using an Ikea trofast unit. My kids aren't sorters, they just throw all the pieces in the bins (as long as they clean up, I don't care *how* they organize the legos! LOL).
We tried separating them by set into individual plastic shoebox bins, but they ended up mixing all the pieces anyways.
first - give up. Everything is gong to get all mixed together, no matter what. Your kid doesn't care nearly as much as you do.
second - we have a box4blox. it isn't nearly as awesome as we thought it would be, mostly because it really doesn't hold that much, requires a lot of time and tedium to "shake them down", and when you lift off a tray, pieces fall out the bottom everywhere anyway. I'm glad I only paid $5 at a yard sale.
third - bins or buckets work best. The big fabric thing works well too for quick clean up. We used all those old swaddling blankets, especially the big ones from Aiden and Anais, or small rugs.
We bought a used lego table off of craigslist last year. It's low and white and has a large trundle drawer underneath, similar to the train tables you often see. The top has a lego board on one side and can be flipped over to a plain white surface as well. My kids use the reverse side for building train tracks or setting up a marble run. The woman selling it gave us all of her son's old Lego and Duplo with it so it was a great deal for $50. We could have just dumped all of the lego into the trundle drawer higgeldy-piggeldy, but decided to use some drawer organizers from IKEA instead. These ones: http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/90050590
The entire drawer is filled with bins and my kids (age 2 and 4) are surprisingly happy to sort the blocks as they toss them in. Duplo goes in one bin, MegaBlocks in another, regular Lego in another, little people and accessories in one, and my son's special Cars Lego set in another.
My older sons are 13 and 9 and still LOVE their Legos. Over the years we have tried most of the methods for organization described and they have all worked okay, but as our collection has grown to mammoth proportions, we now use a combination.
We have some of the Legos stored in clear plastic drawer sets from Target. These are ugly, but the kids like to be able to see through the drawers and they're pretty easy to hide in a closet. We also have a bunch of pieces in large plastic Ikea tubs, the ones that are designed to slide under a bed. The kids like this method because the tubs are shallow and they can dig through them pretty easily. They slide them under the beds as needed.
Finally they have smaller boxes that fit into their Expedit bookcase and a kind of small plastic lego briefcase that they fit keep their newest/more unusual pieces in. We recently tried to commit to sorting (hence the drawer units), but after lots of tears and tedious afternoons, finally gave up and pretty much went back to having all the pieces mixed together with little rhyme or reason.
we made a similar mat to the one described by michael c., and it's worked really well for our 3.5 year old.
a couple of photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36435065@N00/4392519634/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36435065@N00/4391751183/
We have tried many options for this solution. I have stopped buying plastic bins since my son always seems to break them at some point. I ended up buying an 11 gallon bin at IKEA and it works great. He loves to dump out the Legos and dig through his collection and he is really good about putting them away. You can see a photo here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10055124@N03/4430702666/
He has quite a collection of his own Legos and the Legos from his Dad's childhood and they all seem to fit. I just like having them off of the floor!
We use the Box4Blox to organize our legos, too, and I'll second what EllaAnne said about it. It works great for our purposes - we don't have a whole slew of Legos and my 7 y/o daughter doesn't play with them much. It works great for her - when she does play with them she like to separate the box layers and just pick from there. When she's not using them the box fits neatly on her bookshelf. I have a 2 y/o boy who I envision being enthralled with Legos, so I'm not sure it will be the best system for him. It definitely requires an adult or a meticulous older child to get the Box4Blox to function as they advertise.
I wouldn't pay retail for it again, but I would definitely snap one a used one up at a garage sale.
My son recently discovered my brother's old Legos at my parents' house. My mom brilliantly sorted most of pieces into several fishing tackle boxes, the kind with the fold out tray(s). They are great because you can sort by piece type for the super small parts, and throw the larger pieces in the bottom compartment. Most tackle boxes have removable plastic dividers so you can even customize the individual compartments. It makes building so much easier. For the larger pieces, such as the bases, these are stored in flat boxes, similar to a square wreath box.
I think I finally figured out the perfect Lego solution: tackle boxes. Customizable-sized compartments where you can store various kinds of Legos. Not only has it cleaned up our family room, it makes it infinitely easier to build something since you can find what you need very quickly. I posted about it here: http://remarkablydomestic.com/2010/05/11/tackle-lego-chaos-brilliant-lego-storage/
We had a problem with LEGO all over the floor until my wife found these great GoGoSac, which are play mats and toy storage solution all in one. We have 3 of them as they are great, one for duplo & megabloks the other for LEGO storage and the last we use for general toys or when we are going away. We love them & worth a look, pretty cheap and good quality. You can find them GoGo&Co who produce them. I can say they have saved many a shouting match when toy clean-up comes in our house, for that I would buy 10 more... so easy.
peanut butter jars. We have a ton of them and we have a baby that likes to try and get into everything. He hasn't figured out how to unscrew the lids yet, so we go with that. My son likes to build the sets with instructions, so they are sorted into sets, with the instruction booklet in the jar and a pic of what you are building on the outside. Random pieces are organized by characteristics, ie: number of bumps, flat, wheels, etc.
I have a couple of really big flat trays from the garden dept of a local diy store, used for gardening normally. They hold loads of lego and slide neatly under the soaf and armchairs. Another advantage they keep all lego in on place, very easy to tidy up!!! and to hide from the puppy.