Easy Lego Storage

A Rainbow of Lego Love

• What: Lego Piece Storage
• When: 3 years and up
• Why: Keep Lego bricks contained and sorted
• Where: Amazon or The Container Store

I don’t know about you, but in our house, with three kids receiving Lego sets on at least two occasions a year, the little Legos have gotten out of hand. I have struggled with a system to keep the tiny pieces from becoming little landmines all over the house, and finally hit upon something that seems to be working.

I got fed up before our big move and tried several approaches even when only my oldest child loved Lego. I gave him a large shallow bin to put all his Lego creations in. We ended up with a giant mess of Lego bits and we could never find the right piece. I bought a Swoop Bag on Amazon  to contain the mess, but still allow him to spread out the pieces for searching. It still hangs unused on a hook. Finally, I bought some stacking paper-sized bins from The Container Store, and sorted the worst offenders into those containers, and stuck the rest of the Lego into tiny wooden drawers. We lived with this approach, even though it did not contain all the pieces that kept entering our lives and multiplying rapidly. Then we moved.

After the spreading out and consolidating stuff in our new home, I put the art supplies into one set of rainbow drawers. Then I took the color organization system one step further. I devoted the now empty set of nine shallow rainbow drawers from The Container Store to Lego storage.

I still keep the bin for Lego creations. My kids toss their constructions in there for easy clean up. Over time, the pieces fall off and vehicles get raided for parts. Then I take the bin and have a field day sorting.

The beauty of this system, beside the aesthetically pleasing arrangement, is that even the youngest kids can help sort by color. We have an excess of light gray, dark gray, and black bricks, thanks to my kid’s penchant for Star Wars Lego sets. Those colors have not made the transition yet, and still stay in the stackable organizers for the moment. But I have sorted the other colors into their matching color drawer. I also separated out Lego figures and accessories into their own drawer, and did the same thing with wheels and axles (which took up too much space to store with the black blocks). Any color like pink and orange that didn’t warrant a full drawer, I dumped into a smaller container and tucked into the mess of pieces inside the drawer.

When my kids want to build, they can remove the entire drawer with the color of their choice. It sits easily on a table or floor, and the shallow surface makes it easy to sort through and locate the right shape piece. I put each color in the matching drawer, though in retrospect, you might want to line the drawers with white paper to make the color more distinct against the bottom of the drawer. Whether you need pieces for Genius Lego Inventions, Lego Chain Reactions, or just to fuel your child’s imagination, the color-coded drawer storage makes it easy to search.

While we may eventually add some paper for contrast, for now, this system works for all three of my kids and myself. It also allows them to build an astonishing range of inspirations, from football fields to table tennis to Ewok forests, pinball games, and so much more.