My Love/Hate Relationship with Lego

My boys are right into Lego right now. I think it is a fantastic toy most of the time. It's creative, it's constructive, it's brilliant in its simplicity. It also has a lot of small pieces. Small pieces that hurt when you step in them. Small pieces that no matter much you try to contain them to just one part of the house migrate to pretty much everywhere.
We've tried various ways of organizing the Lego. In our last place our boys shared a room. We bought one of those Ikea 9 drawer sets to store their Lego in. That worked pretty well. The Lego for the most part was sorted by colour, so the task of looking for the pieces that were needed went pretty well. In the place that we've just moved into our boys have their own rooms; therefore, the Lego has been split into 2 making it a lot more mixed up. I don't know about you, but I go buggy eyed helping my kids build things looking for just that one specific piece needed.
The other thing about our Lego is that my kids were gifted a huge amount of it (mixed with some Mega Bloks sets) from our nephew who is now grown. I thought that was fantastic. I thought that would be all the Lego they ever needed. Apparently, I was wrong. Lego has gotten more complicated than that. When I was a kid my brother and I had a box of Lego to share from which we built whatever we thought of. Now, most Lego is sold in sets. So there are specific things that they want to build, for which you need specific pieces that you can only get in these sets. So all of their spending money and saving money has been going towards buying Lego sets. And the Lego sets are great and neat and cool and all that. Then they get destroyed and mixed up and you just know that the day is coming when one of them says, "Mom, I want to build the fire truck, or, the Police Station" and then you find yourself digging through piles of mixed up Lego looking for that one piece that you can't find, never mind the instruction booklet for it. I have solved the second problem. Lego has very kindly posted instructions of all their building sets on their website, as long as I remember to download them to my laptop, we're good to go. (you can find that handy tool here). My boys also figured out that their cousin's Lego is made up of sets. So one bored evening I set out searching for the sets. (I know I'm a glutton for punishment) and surprised myself by finding a few of them. Some were Mega Bloks sets (Mega Bloks is a Canadian version of Lego that costs a little bit less) and Mega Bloks also has building instructions on their website (Here).
The other part of having Lego is where to store all the creations without them becoming destroyed. Because you know with kids all their creations are extremely important to them. And toddler little sisters just don't understand that concept really.
As I get all this off my chest it's really just part of the preparation for what lies ahead. I've been promising my oldest that we would have a Lego day once I was finished setting up our new home and before he goes back to school. I'm about 1 day away from that (maybe 2), so wish me well that I don't go crazy, digging through all of that Lego!