Lego Explosion - Please Help!

One of Nicholas' favorite toys are his Legos. Every Christmas and Birthday, he has asked for Legos. It's just a given that it will be on his wish list. Last Christmas, Grandmother gave him two huge sets from the Lego Miners series. They are really big sets so Daddy worked with him to be sure he figured out all of the instructions but he let Nicholas do most of the actual building. Daddy even took pictures of each and every step so that "someday" he can put them together for a stop motion video of their build together.





Nicholas loves his Lego Miners and he always shows them to his friends that come over to play. These and a few other Lego kits stay in their intended built form. But many of the Legos kits eventually get taken apart to use for pieces to build other new creations. We had them all in a box but thought that it might help Nicholas find the pieces better if we sorted them out by color. So we bought a few bins and got colorfully organized.



But recently our dear neighbor gave us a huge tub of used Lego pieces. Seriously, it is huge!



Nicholas and I took on a challenge to count all of the pieces. We quit at 3500 and we were only about half way through the tub. So now we don't just have a lot of Legos. We have a TON of Legos. And they won't all fit in our little color coordinated bins. When Nicholas wants to play with them, he dumps out the entire bucket, spreads them out on the floor so he can find the pieces he wants, and starts building. It's like a Lego bomb exploded and scattered Legos everywhere. Who wants to clean up 7000 Legos at the end of the day?



NOT ME!

There has to be a better way.

So we talked about sorting them all out by color and combining them with his already sorted Legos. But there are problems...There are far too many new Legos for the size bins that we currently have. Plus there are unusual colors that we didn't have before so to sort by color we'll have to combine colors or get more bins.

But this problem has got us thinking...do we really want to sort these by color? I mean, if you are looking for a 2x2 black brick, is it easier to find it in a bin of all black pieces or would it be easier to find it in a bin of just 2x2 bricks that are all different colors?

So now we are thinking about sorting them all by shape instead of color. But how do we divide them up and just how many bins will we need then considering all the different shapes and sizes of Lego pieces that are out there?

Here are some Lego storage ideas I found looking from a quick search online.

Iris Lego Project Case Chest, $54.99



Lego Storage Unit with Trundle, $139.99



Lego Stack Basket, 4 piece set, $44.99



These are all cute storage ideas for basic Lego bricks. However, they are just big storage bins and don't really allow for a lot of sorting by shape and size. It seems like with the numerous different sizes there are that you really need to divide the storage up into lots of smaller sections. I think I just need to go down to Home Depot and get something like this...




...Or perhaps a giant fishing tackle box or tool box.

To make quick work of sorting out different Lego pieces by size, here is a great idea. It's called Box4Blox and it costs $39.95.



There are four trays (hence the four different colors) and within each are different size grids which help to sort out the different size bricks and miscellaneous pieces



I love the Box4Blox idea but the big tub that our neighbor gave us is full of Legos from some rather advanced kits and most of the pieces are really unusual. Here are just a few that I grabbed.


I don't think these would sort out well in the Box4Blox and just how am I supposed to divide these up by shape anyway? We have hundreds of these unusual shapes. I think we may need a few "Miscellaneous" bins.

I'd love to hear your ideas on Lego storage. What works for your child? What doesn't work? And do you hate stepping on Lego bricks when you're barefooted as much as I do?