For the Love of Lego: Making the Most of Small Spaces

Our children have quite the love for all things Lego, especially in a day and age when they have such awesome themes as Lego Friends, Disney Princesses and Lego Creator. As a Mom, I have a love-hate relationship with Legos...I love how creative the kids get, I threw out the "Keep all the set pieces together" mentality early on and love the creative liberties they've taken with building since. I hate the 14 billion pieces that threaten my vacuum and my bare feet...Even with great organization and kids who only play with their legos in the one are of their room that is designated for them, there is alays that one stray, square, sharp little plastic block that I manage to find when I rush into their room barefoot. I also hate how space-consuming they are, with my kids, at least, the bigger, the better, which means that awesome creation is a total space hog. I love the nostalgia legos hold for me, a girl who grew up with tons of legos. I love that they never go out of style and grow with them and their imaginations. So, having said all this, I decided we needed some organization and order before I lost my mind. These kids are well-loved by family who meant well when they ALL purchased them legos for Christmas, I kid you not, I think they got 16 sets that year-I haven't figured out if having a big, loving family is a blessing or a curse when it comes to lego gifts, but we must embrace it nonetheless. (I should also mention two kids=two birthdays and, you guessed it, more legos.) So, to Pinterest I went...and came across a simple, clean, genius idea that had originally been posted on the Family Fun Magazine website, but no longer has a working link, so I followed the blog, "Our Wee Family" instructions as my inspiration.http://ourweefamily.blogspot.com/2012/02/lego-birthday-creation.html

Legoville 1.0

Legoville was born over Summer vacation, just to help with the little bit of Lego pandemonium I thought we had...

Then came the first of many Lego-gift-filled Birthdays and we had to do a bit of an expansion...

Legoville 2.0

Then came the after-Birthday shopping with gift cards...

Legoville 3.0

And Christmas...and after-Christmas shopping with gift cards...

Legoville 4.0

And though this was the perfect set up and gave us plenty of space, then came several consecutive years of even more Birthdays and Christmases. However, this time, instead of upgrading, we renovated what we already had to add olay space, but also use the space more effectively, so I present, the current set up, and I cringe because a Birthday is on it's way this month and Christmas is just around the corner...

Legoville 5.0(or maybe 4.5 since we used the existing structures, haha!)

(Not pictured: Two small sets of lego storage/organizer drawers containing instruction books and sets that are deconstructed.)

I do not have a tutorial, but would be happy to answer any questions if you are interested in building your own! I can tell you we spent less than $100 building ours.(I did get the shelving units on sale for about $10 less each, which helped!) As for the wall, I am shopping today for large letters to put above that say CREATE, and as for Legoville, to be continued...