My Most Ambitious Organization Project Yet (A Love/Hate Story – About Lego). And Also A New Nut-Free Breakfast/Snack the Kids Should Like

My kids love lego.  Well, at least in theory.  They love researching all the different sets, they love watching The Brick Show, they love receiving Lego, and they love to build their new Lego sets.  Once.

After which, completed sets are left forgotten, languishing in bins, or on shelves in their rooms, only to get bumped, jostled, and slowly, broken apart.

Lego, in our house, hasn’t held much lasting play value.  While that is changing a bit for my daughter – who is showing signs of treating her “girl” lego like a little village of dollhouses – for the most part, lego sets have been a one-shot deal in our house.

Which leads me to where I am today.  In the midst of my most daunting organizational challenge yet.

Of course, this is me, I have just one small digression before I get on with my story.

When Lego first came into our house, and a set was built, I immediately put any extra pieces into a plastic bag along with the instructions.  That system worked great.  Until things like birthdays and Christmas happened and my son received multiple Lego sets, that he seemed to build all at the same time.  I gave up trying to keep everything separate, and just put any extra pieces into one big bin and all the instructions into another.  But then the sets started to fall apart, losing a piece here and there.  As that happened, I just threw those pieces into the “spare part” bin too.  Last year, while the kids were home with a virus, I got super ambitious and actually sorted the spare part bin into colours, but that’s as far as my organization of the Lego went.

Until this weekend.

When I started in earnest to fix the mess that our Lego collection had become.

See, as the kids are getting older, and the toys they play with are changing, I am finding that we are ready to switch up the way we organize our basement play room.  But in order to do that, I had to deal with the Lego . . . Also, I made cleaning out the play room and organizing the Lego two of my monthly goals in my PowerSheets this month too, so I do have some motivation to tackle this task.

 

I have now taken out ALL of the instruction books we have, sorted them by genre and am now slowly (VERY slowly) assembling all the pieces for each and every set we have.  As I collect the pieces, they go into a plastic bag, along with the instruction book, ready to be re-built.

Here’s the thing about this project – while my kids can build a set faster than you can say Lego, it takes an inordinate amount of time to dis-assemble what remains of those sets and find any/all of the missing pieces.  I’ve a good 4 days into this, and there is NO end in sight.

The Husband thinks I’ve lost my mind – and maybe he’s right.  But I am determined to to see this project through – if for no other reason than the satisfaction I will derive from completing it.  Although I am also harbouring dreams of the kids, and my son in particular, taking out these sets and building them again with his young cousins as they enter the age of fasciation with all things Lego.

It’s at this point where I should be offering some sort of advice as to how not to get yourself into this mess.  Sadly, I have none.  Kids will be kids, lego isn’t permanent, and I there isn’t an organizational system in the world (that I could come up with anyway) that would have prevented this mess.

But, I can offer some advice as to what you might want to fuel yourself with if you’re staring down a massive organizational project. . . or if you just want something different for breakfast.

I am continually on the hunt for foods the kids can eat for breakfast/snacks, that they LIKE, that are nut-free (so they can take them to school), and that are not filled with sugar.  I made these last week.  While I think they are fantastic, the kids were lukewarm on them.  If I’m being perfectly honest, they are better warmed up a bit . . .but for a recipe that has no sugar, no eggs, no milk, potentially no diary (if you use coconut oil in place of butter), they are GOOD.  In fact, I enjoyed 2 myself this morning with a strong coffee as I sat down to write this post . . .