What’s the best way to display a LEGO set? The answer might surprise you

Fifty packets, over 6000 pieces, hours and hours of tedious work bent over clicking thousands of pieces together. And then finally. Behold!!! The magnificent Hogwarts Castle! The Taj Mahal! The Millennium Falcon! And that’s when seven words go through your head: WTF do we do with this thing? 

Where on earth do you put something this ginormous? On a piece of furniture you can never use again? As a new centerpiece on the dining room table? In a corner where it will slowly disintegrate one LEGO at a time? Nope. This is what you do. Enjoy looking at it for a few days or weeks, and then…

SMASH IT!

Yup. Break that entire thing into pieces and put them in a bin.

But but but, my child put so much work into that!!! 

Yes, I know. And believe me, we still have one or two sets “on display” (annoying the crap out of me) in our house because my kids refuse to let me destroy them, but I fully believe LEGO sets were meant to be smashed, and here’s why. What was once a spectacular display of your child’s ability to painstakingly follow directions can now become the building blocks of their imagination. Tear that LEGO set apart, and they’re gonna build some amazing shit with all those pieces. 

It’s taken me a long time to realize this. For years we had sets on EVERY flat surface of our house. But occasionally a set would get destroyed and the kids would use the pieces to create new ideas from scratch. And the sets come with really cool pieces you would never buy on your own. Windows, archways, slides, wheels, gargoyles, tracks, underwater sea creatures.

As much as the giant sets wow me, the ideas kids invent in their minds are wayyyy more impressive if you ask me. It takes imagination and planning and engineering to create these things. When Zoey was younger, her ideas tended to be on the cuter side.  

 

But as she got older, her creations got more complicated.

Last year Zoey asked me to get her a LEGO motor (I had no idea this thing even existed!). It was cheap and helped her take her creations to a whole new level. Practically everything she makes now has moving parts. 

Of course as complicated and cool her creations get, sometimes the simplest ones are still my favorites. 

So do I hate impaling my feet on LEGOs? Duhhh. But I also kinda love it. Because it means my kiddo is using her imagination to make something awesome. Something amazing. Something that no one else has ever built before.

And she’s not the only one. Not by a long shot. If your kids have made anything cool with LEGOs, please share them in the comments on my Facebook post so we can all look at them and go “Holy crap, that is AWESOME.”

If you liked this, please don’t forget to like and share it! Thank you!! And if your kid is just getting into LEGO, here are a few of our favorites (all clickable!! P.S. I’m an Amazon Associate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)