Seeking a Good Way to Store My Child's Small Lego Pieces.

We use a rolling microwave cart for Legos. The pieces go in a clear shallow bin in the cabinet underneath the cart. This way he can dig around to find the right pieces he needs. I've tried sorting the pieces, but he ends up dumping them all back into the large bin and digging through them anyway!

What I like about the cart is the safety for my 1-year old toddler from the Legos, and the Lego's safety from my toddler! Any works in progress are stored on the top of the cart. It has a 1" rim to keep pieces from sliding off, and we attached two large lego mats to the top to anchor the pieces to.

Totally depends on the volume of parts you are dealing with. My son's collection started out fairly small. Now I have 2 laundry bags full of them and that doesn't include all the ships, cars, trucks, castles, towns, pirate ships/coves that he has all over his playroom. He's a major Lego addict (which I love - he's such an engineer), but he's going to be able to build a life size model of our house (scale 1:1) if we don't get a handle on this soon. I think sorting out pieces by shape and/or color and storing in see through containers might be the way to go. Zip lock bags might work at first. I'm thinking shoe box sized tupper ware containers might be what we have to end up doing. Maybe if I can get him to build a file cabinet out of Legos we can come up with a way for them to be self containing. I swear these things are going to take over the world!

My SIL used a tackle(?) box (like the kind for fishing). It helped keep similar pieces together so her son could find the pieces he needed to build things. When he was done, she encouraged him to put them back in their proper spaces so that he would have them for next time. Good luck....I'm convinces that someone very sadistic came up with legos as a way to torment folks! LOL

There are so many different types of plastic storage containers. I am sure you could find the size you need.

Baskets...either a few medium or one big one w/ or w/out lids. They look nice and the sound of him digging through his legos won't drive you insane like the sound of them in a plastic container. :)

Oh yeah, Lego...greatest invention ever, but what a hassle!!!
We have shelving system from IKEA, that take plastic containers. It's called TROFAST. The containers come in different sizes and you can buy which ever ones you need.
My son has several of these bins full of LEGO. Come playtime, he puts out a blanket on the floor, pours them out and plays. When he is done, he (with help) grabs the four corners of the blanket and dumps everything back in to the containers. If anything gets outside the blanket, he has a large shovel (like from beach toys) to collect the rest. It goes pretty fast.

They make a Lego table, if you haven't already seen it. But, not knowing how old your son is, he might be too big for it. We had one & it was pretty small. A train table might also be a good idea, if you have room. It has a nice big space on top for building & a drawer under for storage. Also big enough to put storage containers to even better organize those tiny pieces.

i don't know if he has room under his bed for a long flat and shallow drawer, but i think that is the best way. The kid I nanny is obsessed with lego and he keeps his legos this way. it spreads out the pieces better. You could build it to custom fit. Wood, wheels and paint and you're there.

If he's just going to dump them out to look at them for all the different pieces, then don't spend a lot of money on fancy storage systems. Use plastic bags or old shoe boxes, and teach him to pick up the pieces when he's done. You can at least divide them by category that way - or constantly reorganize (one day by shape, the next by color, etc). I think that sometimes half the fun of playing with legos is the dumping them out everywhere : )

Maybe the not-so-deep, but big overall otherwise, underbed sort of storage containers....they are wider and flatter with lots of digging-around-in searching space...but still with a lid to snap on top, and the bonus of tucking it under the bed to store. It would already be on the floor to play on a rug with if thats a good set up for you?

Just a thought!

how about for the smaller pieces get a craft organizer (like beads), ones with a bunch of different lil squares. this way you could still put it in your container that you have but the small pieces will still be accessible. My husband is working for a game company and right now they are making a Lego game called Lego Universe and he is constantly bringing home Lego's..lol. It's like he's still a child :) .

http://universe.lego.com/en-us/splash/default.aspx

We use small rubbermaid containers with drawers to store legos that come in sets, but I am going to buy a fishing tackle box for all the small pieces! That's my one goal for today!
Good luck!

Plastic bags (mini, large or small), old shoe boxes, tin cans or old pringles cans, plastic containers with snap lids, different sized cups with lids, hanging makeup (or travel) bag to hang on his doorway.....

I got my son clear scrap booking containers. They were cheap, shallow, and give enough room for him to fish through the pieces with out dumping them all out. When he gets a new set he stores it in it's own case.