We have a very small house (by today’s American standards, at least) and a very large number of things taking up residence - including large collections of books, board games, toys and Legos. We have tried, and continue to try, to downsize, clear clutter, and otherwise lessen our physical load - but it’s just not in our nature. We don’t collect things to have more or keep up with the Joneses. We gather them to use them, and it pleases all of us to have so many terrific things right at our fingertips. It’s just that, sometimes, I would rather have things more than two inches from my fingertips at any given time!
One of the four tiny “bedrooms” in our Cape Cod is called The Playroom, and is JediBoy’s domain. It includes a small desk, a small toy shelf, a sofa, a large bookshelf for homeschooling materials, a stand-alone shelf for Legos and a heavy old dresser that was part of my grandmother’s bedroom set. The heavy old dresser, unfortunately, has to stay - because it is our linen closet.
For a long time the dresser top held fragile things - then I was wise enough to move them out of a room with PLAY in the title. Next it held various pets - the mice and the hermit crabs most prominently. And since the sad demise of our last living crab a few months ago, it has held - naturally - a big tank of sand with no creatures in it.
Lately, the biggest use of The Playroom has been for JediBoy to work on Legos. He can go in there, shut the door (to keep prowling sisters out) and build to his heart’s content. (Which is a lot. He finished the Imperial Star Destroyer, with over 1300 pieces, on his own, before dinner on Friday.) But he would build on the floor, and then want to leave the Legos out and ready, which meant the hardwood grew a protective layer of nubbly plastic. It made the room mostly unusable for any other venture, and deadly to a certain momma’s feet when she tried to tiptoe across it to fetch the Math-U-See blocks or a Handwriting Without Tears workbook. (Hmm, maybe this was part of his plan?)
It finally, finally dawned on me last night to remove the tank o’sand and USE the top of the dresser.
We have dubbed it the LEGO LAB.
I picked up a piece of foam core board (about 20″x30″) at the local craft store for a whopping $2.49. I brought it home and laid it on the dresser top, which is roughly 20″x40″ - but has a mirror attached on the back, making the width in the middle only around 18″. I measured a space for the mirror and then used an X-acto knife and straight edge to cut a 3″x12″ gap out of the back of the foam core. Now it slides perfectly onto the dresser top and snugly around the mirror.
Then I raided the Lego Bins to find 6 base plates - three full-size and three half-size fit fairly well on the board, since the full-size plates are 10″x10″.
I used rubber cement to attach them to the foam core, making sure to use some Legos for guidance so that all the nubs would line up.
(JediBoy asked me specifically to mention on the blog that he took that picture of me using rubber cement.)
We gave it an hour to dry and then tried it out.
JediBoy likes having a dedicated flat space to work on his Legos, a spot where he can leave some of his creations out at the end of the day, and best of all a spot high enough that BabyGirl can’t get into it (if JediBoy is the one using the stool; I’m sure that BabyGirl could scale the stool if we left her alone with it long enough).
He happily announced, “The Lego Lab is a success!“
Now I just have to refinish that stool I’ve been meaning to refinish since, oh, 2001?
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