So, I'm pretty sure I'll be preaching to the choir if you're the mom of a grade-school aged boy (or Heaven help you, more than one grade-school aged boy), but I'm pretty sure that Legos are going to be the end of me fairly soon.
If I don't bleed out from the gaping foot wounds they inflict at night, I will definitely succumb from mental anguish over the sheer volume of the little beasts! The rate at which they are consuming our available remaining floor space is shocking. They're like block-shaped carpet-locusts.
When we first remodeled our boys' room in 2013 PB (that's "pre-blog"), I thought that a few wall shelves and a dresser top would be plenty of storage and display space for a Lego collection. Ha. Silly Laura. 2016 laughs at you.
My breaking point came this weekend. As I stood in the doorway to the room and surveyed the landscape, there was no end in sight. Piles, stacks, battles, bases, lost Chi, dismembered Kai, X-wings with broken wings, Emmett missing his pants. And it's not fair, really, for the boys to have nowhere to put these creations they spend so much time on. Elaborate sets are left to the perils of the carpet, where they are stepped on and crushed, never to be resurrected (see previous note about my foot wounds). The Lego population had to be dealt with.
These photos only scratch the surface- they were snapped after we cleaned half of them up...
Shudder. In totally uncharacteristic fashion, I did a quick online search for a bookcase, barely measured, called the store and held it, drove over, didn't see it in person, bought it for a whopping $330 (which I NEVER spend, and especially not on a whim), and wrestled it back in the house all in the span of a couple hours.
Much to Ryan's delight, he got to spend the remainder of his weekend assembling it and rearranging wall shelves (with the ensuing patching & repainting of NINE holes in the wall) to accommodate it. I spent the remainder of my weekend organizing the entire boys' room, cleaning it top to bottom, and sorting my little locust-nemeses with glee.
I could NOT be more pleased. This bookcase is a monster size, but it looks just right in the room. It has deep, wide shelves, perfect for showing off the Kylo Ren Command Shuttle and keeping it not-decimated. The wood is beautiful, the metal perfectly coordinates with the grey on the beadboard, and it is such a cool design for kids because-- get this-- foot rail and handles! They are actually allowed to climb the furniture to reach the top shelf (thank you, industrial-strength wall anchors). And it's manly enough to make the transition into the teen years.
For a brief moment I entertained fantasies that the bookcase would be styled just so...
Still, I'm declaring victory because at least they're not on the floor. And I took the opportunity to photograph the room for posterity, since I've never done it, and since for this one brief moment it is free and clear of debris!
Ahhhh. Look at that glorious expanse of carpet. SANITY RESTORED. I WIN LEGOS!!!
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