Storage solutions: Radarshane
Posted by Huw,
Shane, aka Radarshane, tells us about his awesome minifig display case:
My display solution is probably a bit different to most here as I have 2 young children that have full access to our entire collection, so I had to put aside my OCD for a nice display, and come up with something for the family - at least until the kids move out and I can claim a room for a decent Lego display.
I didn’t grow up with Lego when I was a child, my grandparents had a small bucket that was used for very blocky cars and houses so there wasn’t a lot of fond memories with this amazing toy. My fascination started with my Mother in Law buying my son 5882 Ambush Attack for his 4th birthday. I was as fascinated as my son was – dinosaurs and cars!
His collection started growing and then my wife saw my interest, combined with my absolute love of Star Wars and bought me 75105 Millennium Falcon, shortly followed by 75054 AT-AT. I think she has regretted that decision ever since. Our collection has far outstripped our storage ability, so we have had to improvise. The kids share a room and now have one dedicated to play. One shelf is set up with the sets they want to have access too. This has been tidied recently, but it soon will be stacked with sets upon sets, half built ones and cannibalised sets for their own creations.
There is a similar shelf of the other wall, and as they get older more of their other toys disappear and Lego sets take their place. I also have one in my room which has just been cleaned out as I make room to display the upcoming 2020 sets when they are released so wasn’t worth photographing for this article.
The remainder of their sets are bagged up and stored in containers in the garage. I labelled all the boxes to make it easier for the to find the ones they want, and have pictures of all their sets in a clear file, so they know what they have.
I also devised a way to sort the bricks and make them accessible to the kids when they want to be creative. I purchased some drawers and strapped them to a pair of dollies, so they can be used in whatever room they play in, or returned to the garage when not in use.
You can spin the drawers around to access another row of drawers on the reverse, there is a separate drawer for minifig parts and the rolling container is full of Lego animals.
The main attraction of the Lego collection for the kids are the minifigs. There are numerous sets they have purchased to be opened up, the minifigs removed and left for me to build, so they can never play with it. I constructed a couple of small display shelves for their favourite figures – one of the hooks had just come away from the wall, hence it sitting on the desk.
But this solution was not enough for the 500+ minifigs we had at the time. My now long-suffering (Borderline Lego widow) wife suggested we make a slightly bigger one.
This has become a feature of our living room. It had the original capacity of about 450 minifigs, but now that our collection has reached almost 1,500 they can get a bit jammed in there. I gave up having a nice display piece about 3 weeks after it went up and the kids had stripped it and remade all the minifigs into their own creations, so it is now an interactive art piece with all sorts of weird and wonderful minifigs making their way on to the display.
At the moment most of them are they way they are supposed to be – I spent a good 2 or 3 moths at the end of last year sorting out the sets and minifigs after almost all of them had become mixed up and were missing parts. Had I known I was going to be spending 3 weeks in lockdown I could have saved it up and done it all then. I will be lucky if I get another week of it looking like this.
I can only dream for the next decade or so of having the sort of display solutions that have been featured in these previously articles (or even a display that stays a display longer than a month) but I think its safe to say that my wife is not going to argue with the prospect of having all Lego in one room rather than scattered over the whole house as soon as the kids become an age when they don’t want to be living with their parents and that room becomes available.
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13 comments on this article
That's amazing. How big is it?
@SimonJohnson said:
"That's amazing. How big is it? "
1.5 meters x 1 meter
It is so cool that you've put so much time and effort into making your Lego very accessible for kids, especially with those well labelled and bags sets in the totes in the garage. To be honest, I would have liked to see your other room as it sits waiting for its new sets. Is the large minifig display a modified 60 x 90 cm Ribba frame on its side or did you make it? Also, I think its funny you think your kids may not want to live with you and you'll have more room. You are obviously very accommodating and fun parents; your kids just might want to stay with you well into their twenties, or move back home after a little taste of independence! Thanks for sharing your story with us.
@mfg3000 said:
"It is so cool that you've put so much time and effort into making your Lego very accessible for kids, especially with those well labelled and bags sets in the totes in the garage. To be honest, I would have liked to see your other room as it sits waiting for its new sets. Is the large minifig display a modified 60 x 90 cm Ribba frame on its side or did you make it? Also, I think its funny you think your kids may not want to live with you and you'll have more room. You are obviously very accommodating and fun parents; your kids just might want to stay with you well into their twenties, or move back home after a little taste of independence! Thanks for sharing your story with us."
I custom made the shelf, I didn't even think to look round for other options to create something like this - although I'm not sure there are a lot of choices in little old New Zealand. If I had made it a couple of years later I probably would have backlit it as well, but lighting it ended up in the too-hard basket at the time - will have to improve that on the next one. At this stage I am relying on the kids hitting their own dark age so they will lose interest, at the very least I will threaten to make them share a bedroom...
I am close to your situation with the kids growing... Bybye LEGO OCD :PP
Nice collection. Love the fact you don't mind the kids mixing stuff up. Sets I'm okay with, minifigs I'm a bit more strict with I'm afraid, only city/creator figs can swap heads etc over here.
Impressed with the creative solution of putting drawers on doilies for moving! Thanks for sharing.
That display shelf is really impressive, you should do a break down of how was it built.
Absolutely Love the outstanding, huge, hand crafted mini figure display. It’s extra awesome that they aren’t locked behind glass and can be handled by all.
I could only envision those dollies tumbling over with young kids around and having pieces scattered everywhere!
Great that you allow the kids access to the LEGO for now. Someday you will have your pristine display and your wife will have the rest of the house LEGO free!
Is that Deadpool immediately to the right of Donald and Daisy in the big frame? That's just begging for a Deadpool Duck to go between them!
LOL. I gave up sorting my kids lego ages ago. Currently ‘my’ sets are nearly all separate from theirs, especially the rarer minfigs from UCS sets.
You have some serious shelfmaking skills! I like your cat as well.
I'm reading this article like 'look, it was me writing, I had the same story, a word to a word'. It's amazing and appears to be practically the same way to lots of adults took up collecting minifigures alone with their kids playing sets. Thanks for sharing this