“Everything is Awesome, Everything is cool when you’re part of a team” – Lego Movie

Last fall I had a quick chat with my son about his Lego collection. Being a 6 year old he has become very fond of the creation driven toy and because of that he has been amassing quite a collection. To get him started I gave him my fairly large collection from when I was a child. Anyways, long story short, our Lego table was quickly filling up! So I had an idea.

I suggested the idea to my son to go through all of his thousands of Lego pieces and find all the pieces of each Lego set he owns. This was going to be a fairly large task as he has well over 20 Lego sets. At first he was skeptical as I had told him that once all of these sets are completed, they could not be mixed up again. But when I explained to him that as I gather up each set, he would then be able to put them together again… almost like a brand new set. He was sold!

So, I set out to do the impossible. Sorting, sorting, sorting and more sorting. I sorted whenever I had some spare time. It really was a daunting task. I had to find a productive way in which to sort through 20,000 Lego pieces. My wife pitched in whenever she could and it became a team job. It took about 2 months just to sort the pieces into piles that made sense. Windows in one pile, tires in another, big blocks over there, smaller blocks over here. Our entire playroom was converted into a Lego sweat-shop and I was the tireless elf!

During the holidays when my son had new Lego sets to play with, I began the task to find each piece that belonged to each of his older sets. Thankfully, with each set, Lego lists each piece and the quantity on the back of each instruction manual. It took me about 6 hours to get the first couple of sets in, but as I went along I became a machine. My 3rd and 4th sets only took about 1-2 hours. After spending about 60 hours on my search mission, I was able to find all of his sets. My son was especially happy as he was able to assemble about 2 Lego sets each weekend!

I certainly questioned my sanity when I began this odyssey of Lego madness. In the end though I was able to teach a valuable lesson of perseverance to my son and I looked at this as just another analogy of life. You need to sort and put all of your life’s pieces into piles. Then you need to search for pieces in those piles that make sense to you and discard the rest. Then you will need someone to help you put them all together. Once you have put forth all that effort, time and patience, the beauty of your hard work will shine through. .

I could not think of a better way to spend over 60 hours of my life!

Updated resolution numbers:

140 of 1000 KMs walked

9 of 50 blog entries posted

4 of 10 books read