Gwen's Nest

Recipes, remedies, and reflections from my neck of the woods.

  • Home
  • Recipes
    • Recipe Index
    • Kitchen Tips
  • Trim & Healthy
    • Trim Healthy Mama Index
    • THM Book Review
    • THM Quick Start Guide
    • Weight Loss Before & After Series
    • THM Amazon Store
    • THM Recipes by Type
    • THM Recipes by Meal
  • Remedies & Health
    • Natural Remedy Index
    • Digestive Bitters Series
    • High Blood Calcium Series
    • Magnesium Deficiency Series
    • Plantain Herb Series
    • Rabbit Tobacco Herb Series
    • Whooping Cough
  • Reflections
  • Creative Home
    • Creative Home Index
  • Shop
    • Trim Healthy Store
    • Natural Health Remedies Store

Lego Storage

July 16, 2010 By Gwen Brown 5 Comments

Lego storage has become one of our principal housekeeping issues.  It impedes vacuuming, a positive mother-son relationship, and the health of my feet.
Friends, I think I may have found a solution.

If your feet bear permanent scars from stepping on lego bricks…
If you’ve ever spent hours sorting and organizing legos, only to discover that they’ve all been dumped into a huge pile…
If you’ve ever considered having a cement truck back up to the basement window just to get rid of the minefield of legos…

then this post is for you.

Full Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Disclosure Page

We’ve accumulated a small mountain of legos, and I’ve tried numerous and sundry lego storage solutions, including the cool BOX4BLOX – Lego Toy Storage Organizer (One Unit).
They’ve either been too small to handle our collection, or too much work to keep up with.  We had a mish-mash of lego bins, because the big bins are too deep to dig through, but the shallow bins don’t hold as much or fit on our shelves very well.  And then we have one shelf that’s devoted to the lego masterpieces that cannot be broken up and stored.

Every time we cleaned up, we’d have to pick up a bajillion tiny pieces,
and while doing so, the kids would find *the* piece that they’ve been
looking for and totally forget that they’re supposed to be cleaning and
get sucked back into Legoland.

can you hear the digging?

The result was lego building sprees that just never ended, and the pieces would get tracked all over the house.  And since my toddler loves playing with them too, I do mean *ALL* over the house.

Then, I decided that cementing them into the floor was a good idea.  Except that was too expensive.

This is one of the more successful ideas that I’ve implemented for cleaning.  Meet the dust pan…aka ‘the scooper’.  So at least we’re picking up dozens of pieces and not just one at a time.

The scooper was an improvement, but it didn’t fix the overall lego storage
problem.

It finally dawned on me that the best way to pick up legos is all at once.  As in, put a mat down under them, and just put away the mat with the legos inside.  So here’s what I came up with…

I bought a green curtain, and a blue curtain panel at the Goodwill for $1.50 each.  I wanted a water/grass effect.  I cut the loops off the green curtain, and stitched the two panels together down the middle.  Now we have a nice, big two-tone mat.  Then I stitched one loop on each corner, and they work like handles.

When you want to clean up the legos, you just scoop any escapees back onto the mat, and then pick up the four handles like this:


a ginormous sack of legos

Then, instead of the measley flat bins, you can get a big boy storage tub.  I took out the bigger flat panels, and stand those on the side…and toss the instruction manuals into the bottom of the tub

Tie the handles loosely if you wanna, and just toss that bad boy into the tub.


voila!
Compared to our usual routine, this is a cakewalk.  The big bin fits on the bottom shelf, and takes up half the space of all the smaller containers we used to have.

When you’re ready to play again, just take out the sack-o-legos…

and spread the mat out on the floor.

Mt. Saint Lego is reborn, and ready for play.

But wait kids, there’s MORE!

You can choose if you want to build on the green ‘grass’ side of the mat, or the blue ‘water’ side.  If you want to build a village in the grass, you just pick up the green side of the mat…

and dump all the legos into the sea.  Where you can dig and play to your hearts content.


…and we all lived happily ever after in Legoland.
What are your lego storage solutions?  If you try this, please let me know how you like it!  So far, it’s working like a charm here.

Filed Under: Creative Home, Kids & Learning, Organizing Ideas Tagged With: kid solutions, legos, organizing ideas

« Easy Bread Recipe
Toddler Sleep Remedy »

Comments

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. Michelle says

    December 15, 2015 at 2:18 PM

    Brilliant! I’m staring at a big pile of legos on my floor right now!

    Reply
    • Gwen Brown says

      December 15, 2015 at 3:39 PM

      They get just a little out of hand, don’t they. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Kristine says

    November 22, 2016 at 5:45 PM

    I had to laugh at your one cute little bucket and scoop. My son has 3 full buckets and has used a snow shovel (!) to scoop them when I finally can’t take it anymore. Luckily he mostly keeps his Legos’s in his room now that he’s a bit older. I wish I’d thought of something like this when he was younger!!!

    Reply
  3. Lori Madison says

    December 17, 2019 at 3:29 AM

    Where did you get that LEGO raised base? Kinda looks like mountains with a stream in the middle. Thanks!!

    Reply
    • Gwen Brown says

      July 22, 2020 at 10:18 AM

      Hi Lori! We found that one at a local thrift shop. Cool, huh! 🙂 You could check ebay if you can’t find one locally.

      Reply

follow Gwen’s Nest

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Favorite Posts

I can't believe how simple this recipe is, and it looks AMAZING! Must try this one.
Get your fix of chocolate covered cherries with this amazing sugar free milkshake!
What is Trim Healthy Mama all about? I'll give you the run down and show you photos of my food and weight loss journey.
MyTHM weight loss before and after photos and journey
My favorite THM recipes sorted by type: S, E, FP, & Crossover.
Try this delicious all natural cough remedy...I have the ingredients in my cabinet!
Oh my word...this is not only delicious, but it's been amazing for knocking out colds & flu symptoms!
This household remedy is probably already in your pantry, and is the classic ear pain remedy.
How I get my kids to fight over who gets to mop the floor...
An EASY and fun DIY gift for the Catan player in your life...
This impressive makeover was done with craft paint in one afternoon...it looks great & lasts!
The true story of a gift that wasn't deserved, and the most passionate and personal giver.
My 5 minute solution to 2 good hair days.
True tales of my son...a modern day Viking child.
I ♥ PINTEREST & FACEBOOK...come follow along there too!
This site and its contents are © Gwen's Nest, 2015

I blog here because I love to help others, so please feel free to use anything here for your own home and family.
I love for you to share links from my site! But if you want to use a specific photo, recipe, or other content, please check out the terms of use below.
All the legal jazz is here:
TERMS OF USE • PRIVACY POLICY • FULL DISCLOSURE • DISCLAIMER • MEDIA KIT
CONTACT GWEN • I ♥ MY REDESIGN TEAM • FOODIE PRO THEME
We use cookies to provide social media features and to analyze our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our analytics partners. Your continued use of our site implies you agree to this.