Read Time: 3 Minutes
For people with kids, it likely comes as no surprise when I say that Lego bricks can accumulate in great numbers over time. In our house, my kids have enjoyed getting Lego sets for many years now, but the finished products rarely stay assembled for more than a few months before being broken down for pieces to use elsewhere or just casually tossed into a storage box to make room for a new set.
Having not much to do over the weekend a few weeks back, I set about sorting the many thousands of loose bricks into piles by colour group, then went about gathering the various instruction manuals we still had.
It was an enormously tedious task but also completely visual in nature, so it made multitasking a breeze. With earbuds in and a favourite audiobook playing, what would have been a task that could have driven me to insanity became something easy.
Hours drifted by easily, and in the end, I had bags and bags of sorted bricks. Then, the real fun began! Choosing one to rebuild! Much like the sorting, following the instructions is almost entirely visual in nature, so again, listening while lego-ing made the time melt away.
What was the result? A fully built Attack on the Burrow set from Harry Potter! Check it out; I’m super happy with the end product. Wand-waving Weasleys and more detail than you could find in a shop in Diagon Alley. This was one of the newer ones we had. I’ve since done a couple more and found I was a few pieces short here and there.
My photography skills suck, so here’s a stock photo from Lego.com. Mine looks exactly like this though 🙂
Sure, while it would be handy to know where these missing pieces went (I’m guessing long ago they went up the vacuum and chucked out), with a little ingenuity, everything went back together, and my youngest is over the moon at having “new” Lego to play with again.
Not only has it revived my kid’s interest in their Lego, but it’s also rekindled my love of building Lego sets that I had when I was a lot younger than I am today. Much like when I was a kid, all the extra cool stuff is rather expensive, so it will need to stay as a once-or-twice-a-year hobby for me.
It was Father’s Day here in Australia just recently (for some reason, we celebrate it in September, which is out of sync with most of the world), and I may have organised for my kids to buy me a Lego Viking ship… and maybe a T-rex.
After all that is built though, there are still bags and bags of loose bricks on my desk, a fair number of instruction manuals, and so many audiobooks I still need to listen to! It would be fair to say I’ll be keeping myself busy for some time come.
So, no offence to Snow White, but rather than whistling while I work, I’d rather listen while I Lego!
Again, thanks to Lego.com for the image.
Do you build Lego and listen to audiobooks? Do you have another hobby you like to do while listening to audiobooks? I’d love to hear from you! Drop a comment below and tell us all about it!