After a bit of a project hiatus, I’m ready to jump back into some DIY. First up is a time-sensitive project for my kids that is going to stretch my creative muscles a bit and be pretty FUN at the same time because it all revolves around: play time!
Our playroom has gone through many changes over the years and has evolved as our kids have grown. LJ and Vi are only 21 months apart in age, so their toys have always been pretty interchangeable and have leveled-up at roughly the same time.
As they have both grown, we have slowly added more developmentally-appropriate toys.
I never worried about Vi choking on a small piece of LJ’s toy, because it simply didn’t exist in our home. What was safe for Vi was also safe for LJ and vice-versa and we were very intentional about that.
We’re in a different stage of life now. They are 5 and 3 and each have toys with small parts and tiny pieces that are fine for them, but definitely not for Ollie. Since Ollie is (quickly!) approaching the stage of crawling and will likely also be putting things he encounters into his mouth, it’s time to adjust the playroom setup once again and move all the toys with tiny pieces out.
The most urgent thing we needed to address was the LEGOS. Oh my word, Legos have completely invaded our lives. LJ is obsessed with building little farms and houses created all these little setups around the playroom. It was adorable and chaotic and also, no longer safe around Ollie. Last week we finally moved all the Legos into the basement, but they’re currently just everywhere down there and don’t really have any central workspace or storage anymore.
We had previously been using the train table for Lego storage in the playroom and it worked really well at first – it provided a nice flat tabletop to work and Legos could be stored underneath. Plus, LJ’s growing love of Legos coincided with his fading interest in trains so it was nice to use this table for multiple phases of life. Now, the Lego collection has outgrown what can fit on and in the table (plus, I imagine that Ollie might have an interest in trains in a year or two, so I’d like the train table to be available for the train/truck/car stage if he wants) so it’s time to come up with a different solution.
I’ve been scouring Pinterest for inspiration and am starting to hone in on a vision for our Lego storage. I’m leaning towards a freestanding table to allow multiple kids to work and move around the space. I love the idea of including shelves for storage, like this Ikea hack from If Only April:
I also love the idea of something totally custom and built to a size that exactly fits the flat baseplates with a rim around the edge to keep tiny pieces from falling off. Maybe something like a larger version of this DIY Lego Table from Love Create Celebrate?
This table will be in our basement, which is an easy way to keep things separate from Ollie in our daily life; however, the basement is still our main area for entertaining. We often have other families over and so Ollie will still occasionally be down there (not to mention other little ones) and even though that will always be supervised, I still want to make sure whatever solution we come up with has the option to tuck away all the Legos safely.
The reason this project is time-sensitive is because the Legos are already in the basement and we’re hosting a big Super Bowl party on Sunday. Yes, this Sunday. Six days from now Sunday. Can we get this finished in time? I sure hope so! I’ll be posting real-time progress this week on Instagram so if you want to see how we’re doing on this goal, you can follow along there!
simplify the chaos 