Containing Legos

If I had a dollar every time I had to contend with Legos, I'd be a rich lady!

Legos are super popular building blocks that can withstand the test of time and get played with over and over. The fact that kids often start playing with them as toddlers and continue play with them through middle school makes a Lego collection an excellent investment. But Legos can easily make parents feel frustrated since they are, in essence, hundreds if not thousands of tiny bits of plastic that can easily get scattered and stepped on.

How to organize Legos is one of the most common questions I get from parents.

What I tell them is that serious ground rules for the Legos must be established.

Not with the kids, though.

With the parents!

When it comes to Legos, parents make storage systems way too complicated!

So without further ado, here are my rules for Legos:

NEVER ORGANIZE LEGOS!!!

DON'T separate them out by color like they do in home improvement tv shows - unless you want to lose your mind.

DON'T store them by sets with the hope that they will someday get reassembled or sold because the chance of that happening is slim to none.

DON'T keep them in their original boxes or containers.

And DON'T hang on to Lego manuals, just in case - especially when you can find the instructions online at http://letsbuilditagain.com/index.php.

So how DO you store Legos? Here's how This Land is Your Land Camp in Oakland, CA does it - and it is simple and brilliant!

Get a large clear-ish storage box with a hinged lid like this and dump ALL the Legos in. Make sure the box has ample room for assembled and dissassembled Legos.

Also throw in a heavy duty solid color plastic tablecloth like one of these. It doesn't have to be huge. Just sturdy.

Each time the kids want to play with Legos, they can spread the table cloth over the floor or a table and dump a pile of Legos into the center. The painters tape around the edge isn't necessary with a good tablecloth - although if you have a swarm of littles playing with Legos on the floor, tacking the cloth down with tape is an excellent idea.

When playtime is over, gather the table cloth up around the edges and funnel the Legos back into the storage box. Fold the tablecloth back up, toss it in the box with the Legos and you're done!

Make sure to display some of your kid's Lego creations proudly on a bookshelf! And please don't freak out when they want to take it apart and make a new creation! Legos are toys, afterall!

As a final note, this storage solution also works well for any building toys such as wooden blocks, Playmobile, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, and K-Nex.