Lego Glut

I'm embarrassed to say that we have a Lego problem. I mean excess, overabundance, plethora... you get the idea. Ever since Luke turned 5 we have been lavished with gifts in the Lego genre and I'm very grateful. Every birthday and Christmas for the past 3 years he has received Lego sets from grandparents, aunts and uncles and some from us. Not to mention the 7 large sets that were Darin's as a boy that his dad saved very nicely for him. And now, Ethan has turned 5 and has entered the Lego realm! Oh my!

Now, don't get me wrong... I'm all about Legos. I think they stretch the brain, spatial awareness and creativity. It has built a lot of confidence in my shy, tentative firstborn. However, I'm starting to wonder if we have too much?? Is there such a thing? We have a room in our house that is designated the "Lego Room." (Something else for which to be very grateful.) Definitely something to ponder and be aware of because it can all definitely lead to greed and wanting more.

In the meantime, we had to come up with a plan to organize all these Legos and I love to organize! So here is what we've done. We have an old train table that we use to display all the sets that are put together and made a little town scene. (too embarrassed to show you just how many sets we have so I haven't taken a picture) Sometimes they get moved onto the floor to be played with more easily. Typically when a set is taken apart it is put into a ziplock bag and stored in the original box. However, we do have some random Legos not from sets and other pieces from sets that have gotten misplaced.

So, we have sorted all the Legos by color and size. 

I bought the bins one at a time from Michael's with my 40% off coupon. 

Then we had a sorting party. I did most of the sorting, but the boys helped. 

When something has been taken apart, it typically gets thrown in this blue bin until it gets resorted. I found that when we had all the legos mixed up together, they always DUMPED the whole bin out to find a piece and that was driving me crazy. The legos were getting scattered everywhere!! 

It takes some maintenance, but it is much more manageable now. 

Then I decided to buy a little file folder to store all the directions for the Lego sets. 

They were getting mistreated or misplaced and this system works much better. 

Hope this system will help someone else out there!