I am so impressed with your storage ideas! My son (age 28) was a legomaniac from elementary school almost to high school. He built a large city on a huge piece of plywood which he spent his time constantly "tweaking". We still have the legos in big bins in our basement. What a great activity for your boys and husband to share.

Of course you have "the hang of it" - all that practice sorting and storing yarn and quilt fabric counts for something! Seriously,
the storage system is awesome.

I'm about to drool on the keyboard. Although I'm more of a house builder myself. Can I come play?

I bow to your storage perfection! You go girl.

You are such a good mom. The first time I stepped on a Lego block at 2 am, all Legos were banned from my house! Mean, I know. But it really hurt! Kudos on the organizational skills.

wow, your boys are looking so big and grown up!!

and congrats on your organizing :D I just went to the lego store for the first time, we went to the one here in LA (Glendale actually). What fun the wall of legos is!! Now how to organize those into your fantastic system ... in the lost and found box, or their own special box??

Your LEGO storage beats mine. My 8-year-old won't let me throw out the boxes and they are all under our dining room table. (The dining room, by the way, is actually called "the Lego room" in our house.) The pieces from all the sets are now jumbled together. Oh well!

If he hasn't already switched over to NXC for MindStorms development, he really should. It's much nicer than the LabView stuff.

You can also do things like sensor-less collision-detection which you can't do easily without a real programming language...

I look forward to seeing future inventions :)

i'm just happy if they put a set together once. then it's creative-crazy at my house!

Ingenious Lego storage solutions! I usually come here to be awed by your knitting and sewing endeavors, but am now giddy about the Lego storage idea. I have 2 boys, and a husband, who are amassing quite a collection. Must go buy plastic boxes this week!

Ingenious Lego storage solutions! I usually come here to be awed by your knitting and sewing endeavors, but am now giddy about the Lego storage idea. I have 2 boys, and a husband, who are amassing quite a collection. Must go buy plastic boxes this week!

Ingenious Lego storage solutions! I usually come here to be awed by your knitting and sewing endeavors, but am now giddy about the Lego storage idea. I have 2 boys, and a husband, who are amassing quite a collection. Must go buy plastic boxes this week!

Love the marble elevator, nice explanation too. Awesome storage.

Wow. That is some massive lego storage!

My son is now 12 and this was our first Christmas without lego. He got the mindstorm robot last year and for more than 6 months he built and programmed something new every day. Love your "wall of lego".

I had to giggle at the Lego storage solution you've come up with. But I nearly dropped to my knees in Alison-awe (a familiar sensation to all your readers, I'm sure) when I read that you keep your instructions in sheet protectors in a 3-ring binder! If you could manage to squeeze another hobby into your repertoire, you'd be a kickass genealogist. We love binders and sheet protectors! The Germans have been wonderful record keepers. Just sayin'...

Impressive!

Beautiful!

I am very impressed by your Lego storage skills! My younger daughter was an absolute Lego maniac when she was a kid (& other building type things too - like Capsela - wonder if they still make those). so I am surprised that none of her kids are. The boys like Legos (they got some Star Wars legos for Christmas but more because they are Star Wars fanatics). They were absolute Thomas the Tank Engine maniacs but are outgrowing that 0 little sister still likes to play with the Thomas stuff (which at least equals the volume of Legos that you have). We are taking an extended family vacation to Carlsbad Ca (home of Legoland) - maybe that will increase their interest.

Hey Donna, they do still make the Capsela stuff! The boys got a set for their birthday or Christmas a couple of years ago. They built some things right away, but have forgotten about it for a while. I'll have to get it out at eye level again for them to rediscover! Thanks for reminding me.

So impressed with the Lego storage! Have you seen this? http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/some-assembly-required They were a HUGE hit this Christmas for my 4 and 7 year old boys :)

Wow, wish my nephew had been into these. He's now 19 and spent his high school years on the Robotics team.

Thank you so much for this post! Wow--I'm impressed. I showed my boys the video of B's elevator and the picture of all your legos. They said, "Can we go play at that house???"

Off to buy some storage bins now....

My husband speaks longingly of the day when our oldest will be old enough for Mindstorms. I am so borrowing your storage idea. I even have those same shoe boxes already!

I'm totally awed by your Lego storage. My twins are 9 and we are overrun. I'm making the trek to IKEA tomorrow, though, in hopes of making calm out of chaos. Most of our sets have ended up in gen. pop. and it's pretty ugly. I may steal your idea about the instructions and the plastic protectors, though. Do you mind?

I'm totally awed by your Lego storage. My twins are 9 and we are overrun. I'm making the trek to IKEA tomorrow, though, in hopes of making calm out of chaos. Most of our sets have ended up in gen. pop. and it's pretty ugly. I may steal your idea about the instructions and the plastic protectors, though. Do you mind?

WOW - so do they put the model together and then disassemble it before storing it away? We had a "trophy shelf" of lego models gathering dust, as after they'd been conquered once the thrill was somehow gone. They'd fall over and inevitably one tiny but crucial connector piece would go missing and there'd be no prospect of ever putting it together again.

Oh, such a lovely site!
I can't get my son to fully disassemble any of his to box them up. Now if I could only find wall space for 1 more mile of shelving to keep them all "organized".

Oh, my son would die of envy to see all that Lego! Which is precisely why I'm not letting him see your post! We're not as Lego-organized as you. All the Bionicles have their own LARGE bin and a display shelf and most of other Lego is in a separate LARGE bin.

Such a lucky woman. Don't tell me that you are not occassionally tempted to try your hand at building something - just to show the guys that woman can do it as well!

Holy cow! I am sending you all our Legos. ;)

Cool lego storage! My kids would never keep each set together (twins, age 9). We've ended up with a section of little drawers labeled things like '1x2 flat', '1x2 special', '1x3 flat', etc. But, because they ARE 9 year old boys, we also have 2 BIG drawers full of unsorted legos and 2 big drawers for those 'special' lego creations that no one is allowed to touch, let alone destroy for parts. :) I, too, had the instructions in 3-ring binders, but it didn't last. Now they live in an old 'inbox'-style holder. Maybe I'll try again someday.

Your Legos storage looks very familiar. My 35.5 year old son got his first legos when he was 6.5 and has been building ever since. Now I have 4 grandsons and the only one not actively building is the 14 month old. He just chews on the duplos. We never kept the bricks and other components together in sets, but instead we had clear boxes with labels reading such cryptic things as 1x2 red flat or 2x6 all colors. The landscape plates were stored in a plastic hanging file box. The only ones that caused any trouble were the moonscape ones. As for the instruction sheets, they were saved for a long time but somehow many were lost when things went into storage when he moved out the first time. (He and his entire family now live with me in the family home where he grew up.)

Just saw this storage system - very impressive, and the direction we will soon be heading in... Lego overload around here.

You are my hero! Ditto what everyone else said. We have Legos all jumbled in big flat under-the-bed style trays. It makes it easier to dig through, and my son thus far resists sorting them into sets. But when he sees the light, I'm going to do this! And I love the binder idea; we'll have to try that immediately.

oh my, I simply must show this storeing method to my husband. it's awesome.
I told Gil, before he get's any more legos we need to re build all his various sets in order to sort out the pcs.

I'm sure he'd love Starwars but it is way too expensive here, so will have to wait till someone can bring it back for us. it's a 3rd of the price in England.

and also, he is seriously into transformers right now.