Up until a couple of weeks ago, we kept my daughter’s Legos in these cute DIY Lego Containers. She loved them and it was working really well for us, until my husband asked her why she never builds her sets anymore. She told him that she had really tried, but with all of her Legos, she could never find all of the pieces to one set. She would eventually get frustrated and give up. My husband, the master builder, decided it was time for something new.
My husband, a Lego lover since childhood actually has his own set of Legos that the kids aren’t allowed to play with unless he is supervising. I have watched in amazement when he is able to easily build castles, space ships and carriages 20 years after he was given the original sets. His secret? Organizing by color. It is a lot easier to find a Lego that you are looking for, if you are only looking in a portion of your Legos for it.
I found these drawers for the Legos and we started sorting. The ideal drawers are wide and shallow. They make for the easiest searching while giving you enough room for your Legos. We broke her Legos into 12 categories. Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Orange, Pink, Black, Grey, White, Brown, Purple and Specials. Specials include anything that isn’t a typical Lego such as minifigures, wheels, and little accessories for my daughter who has a lot of the animal sets it includes little things like dog bowls and carrots for her Lego rabbit and such.
We organized everything so that each category had its own drawer. It you wanted to take it a step further you can sort your brown from your tans and your dark green from your light green too.
My husband made the cute little printable here, and I cut each one out and then taped it to the front of the of the drawer using packing tape.
I have all of her set booklets in a basket on the top and it has worked fantastic! She loves that she can make her sets again. The number one question I get about this system is don’t they all get mixed up again? It depends on the kid. This is a great solution for your older child who wants to build their sets and get creative, but it might not be a great solution for a young child who loves to dump boxes of toys!
How do you organize your Legos?
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Lego Labels
My husband is also a master builder, and between him and my son, we have Legos everywhere! My husband built a large table just for their lego "town", but there are all the strays and extras. You organization idea would suit us perfectly. Thanks!
My husband is also a master builder, and between him and my son, we have Legos everywhere! My husband built a large table just for their lego "town", but there are all the strays and extras. You organization idea would suit us perfectly. Thanks!
This is a great solution! My son's legos are all in one big box and it's hard to find what he's looking for.
What a great idea!
I'm glad sorting by color helps when you're building by set.
Wow!
That is such a great idea! I am definitely doing this with my daughter's legos.
This certainly sounds like a workable solution to me! The owner of the Legos can complete whichever set they want–and everyone else–well they don't get to step on all the loose pieces!!
We store our Legos in a couple of different ways. We try to keep special sets together, first. Then we have the random collection thrown in a tub. Lastly we have the ones stored underneath furniture, waiting to be discovered. This sounds much better.
this is so completely genius! Wish I had this system when mine were younger! lol
this is so completely genius! Wish I had this system when mine were younger! lol
What a smart idea, I love being organize.
Very smart idea!
This is such a great idea. Those storage cases are great for keeping those little LEGO bricks sorted and organized.
This is like a mini version of the bulk bins at the Lego store (at least the one I've been to in Orlando). As much as I like color-sorting for a lot of things, I think I'd be more inclined to sort them by type/size, since the colors can be see easily.
We have a similar system! The only problem is to get my kids to sort them out by color. I tried doing it for them a couple of times and it takes all day… then five hours later it's all back to chaos!
Oooo – I would love to see my nephew have a color-coordinated set up for his LEGOS. That would be so cool to have them so nicely organized. I love that there's a drawer dedicated to 'special' parts.
My son is the master builder in our house and currently he has all of his pieces sorted with the appropriate paper work. I love this idea better because I think it just looks a lot happier!
A rainbow of colour just feels so much better too.
What a great idea! I have a one year old son, so I am seeing Legos in my near future 🙂 I will definitely remember this post when they are strewn all over the floor.
this came at a good time. my daughter just had her birthday and go more legos and her lego basket is literally overflowing. such a good idea.
That is the smartest thing I've ever seen with Legos. They're no fun to pick out of a jumbled pile!
I have this drawer organizer in my office for storing typical office supplies. Using it for Legos is a great idea!
My kids used to LOVE lego but the lack of organisation used to drive me mad! This is such a good idea.
The only organised thing I did do was to laminate the instructions when they were new, that worked really well, otherwise you end up loosing pages and those booklets get really tatty really quickly.
I love this idea. Do you have a link to the drawer system? Is it just one big piece, or is it a stack of smaller pieces?