Lego Storage Story, Part 2

(Lego Storage Story Part 1)
(Lego Storage Story Part 3)
Our playroom has undergone some changes since we moved in five (!) years ago. The best change of all is that we have added these two precious people to our family. I'm happy to say that we're still using the window seats and baskets that I put together four years ago...using them more than ever.

Here's another change...

I've been inspired by my friend Jen, and by Pinterest, to add photo labels to my canvas baskets (the big ones are here and the medium ones are here) that we use in the window seat (above) and in the Expedit shelf (below.)

I mean, I knew that my younger kids are not readers, but it never occurred to me that a photo label would help them help put things away. Early childhood education was not my major! And the photo labels are helping.

I took photos of the things in each basket and laminated the photos. I used self-adhesive velcro on the back of the photos, and sewed velcro to the canvas bins (the canvas comes off of the frames) and then stuck the photos on the bins. When we switch what goes in the bins, I can just switch labels.

So, as I mentioned in Part 1, I had come out of my fog and was trying to start organizing the house and Jonathan's Legos. I was inspired by this post to use the IKEA Trofast system to organize our Legos. The blogger used two tall Trofast shelves to organize her sons' legos, which gave her room for twelve small Trofast tubs.

As we were experimenting with sorting by color, I took a mental inventory of our Legos and our playspace. (I felt a little less guilty about how many Legos we have!) I realized that we didn't have quite enough space for two tall Trofast shelves in the spot where I thought they might fit. But we also didn't need room for twelve tubs. We didn't need a big tub for baseplates, and we had so few brown and orange pieces that they could probably share a tub. I decided that a smaller, single Trofast frame would do the trick for us. It had slots for nine tubs, and was about the same size as our coffee table.

Unfortunately, it didn't come in black/brown. Also, we have an almost-toddler who has been called a "human vacuum cleaner."

To be continued...