<em>Ah, LEGO. Most parents have a love/hate relationship with the things. On one hand, they’re undeniable awesome. On the other, keeping track of them, cleaning them up, sorting them, (often multiple times a day) can be a major source of headaches.</em>

<em>We call this the LEGO problem.</em>

<em>(check out<a href="http://frogandsnail.com/2011/01/organizing-lego/"> pt. 2</a> and <a href="http://frogandsnail.com/2011/02/boy-genius-the-lego-problem-whats-that-brick-pt-3/">pt. 3</a>)</em>

Are you drowning in LEGO?

Before you go out and buy yet another set filled with pieces you already own think about this: The whole point of LEGO isn't the number of bricks you have, but what you do with them. In other words, what you probably need are more instruction manuals...not more LEGO sets.

<a href="http://www.brickfactory.info/index.html">My favorite LEGO resource is the Brickfactory</a> -- a fan-created website that contains scans of LEGO instruction manuals that go all the way back to 1958. Maybe you had a favorite set growing up? There's a good chance they've scanned the manual. Now you and your kids can put the piles of LEGO you already own to good use. How cool is that?

Remember that you <a href="http://shop.lego.com/pab/">can buy individual bricks directly from LEGO</a> to supplement your collection. You don't have to buy the branded sets all the time.

Want to learn how to build that Rolls Royce pictured above? Here you go:

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<a href="http://frogandsnail.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/002.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-230" title="002" src="http://frogandsnail.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/002.png" alt="" width="500" height="1000" /></a>

<a href="http://frogandsnail.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/brickfactory2.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-224" title="brickfactory2" src="http://frogandsnail.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/brickfactory2.png" alt="" width="500" height="498" /></a><a href="http://www.brickfactory.info/index.html"><em>(All images in this post are from the 1976 set at the Brickfactory)</em></a>

Visit the <a href="http://www.brickfactory.info/index.html">Brickfactory for tons more</a>!