LEGO: love it or hate it?

It’s common for parents to have a love/hate relationship with LEGO. On the one hand it’s this incredible construction toy, with multiple learning opportunities, inspiring children of all ages to create things beyond their wildest dreams.

One the other hand it is also an instrument of torture, that clogs the vacuum, causes multiple foot injuries, breeds on its own and has to be extracted from the noses of younger siblings!

Some days LEGO will be your best friend and others, your arch enemy. That’s just how you have to roll.

Keeping LEGO under control

Working out a decent storage system for LEGO can be half the battle. This definitely needs thinking through and planning. Don’t buy any LEGO for your children without also purchasing some LEGO storage.

So what should you get to contain all these little bricks?

You could go for the branded LEGO storage. If you want the storage itself to look good and for everyone to know that’s where the LEGO is kept then go for that. The storage is designed like LEGO bricks and comes in all sorts of sizes.

One tip – whatever size you think you will need, go for the next one up! These can be quite pricey, so make sure you shop around and look out for any offers.

If you don’t want to pay a premium for the branded LEGO storage then another really good option are those DIY sorting trays you can pick up in Homebase or B&Q. These make a great option if your children have lots of LEGO.

Also, if you buy several different sizes then it means they can sort heads into one, arms into another, square bricks into another and so on. The more they have they can start to get colour coordinated even. The downside of this option is that you will need space to stack all of the boxes – a shelf perhaps?

What about when it’s constructed?

Another problem with LEGO is, what on earth do you do with it all once it’s constructed? Children are so pleased with their constructions when everything is together and in many cases these things can take days of work, so you need to preserve them for a while at least.

Whatever you decide might depend on if you have younger children and/or dogs and cats. You could use bedroom window sills perhaps, or maybe have a shelf put up in your child’s bedroom or playroom.

It needs to be somewhere safe and out of general reach, so you will need to decide where that is in your house.

The wonderful world of LEGO

If you can get the LEGO storage right first, you can then embrace the wonderful world of LEGO in all it’s glory. Gone will be the days of sucking it up the hoover after you’ve extracted it from you heel for the tenth time in a day.

LEGO is continually developing and expanding. You can pretty much find LEGO anything these days and the choices are quite mind blowing. You really are spoilt for choice and shopping for LEGO can be quite exciting.

You can get LEGO Elves, LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars (very popular in our house), LEGO Friends, LEGO Angry Birds…even LEGO Ghostbusters, DR Who and Scooby Doo.

The beauty of all these LEGO sets of course is that ultimately they can all be mixed and matched and even joined together to make a whole LEGO world.

Do you have LEGO in the house? How do you keep it under control?