Sidebar
Why I Build LEGO Sets I Don’t Keep
Lego wasn’t part of my childhood. I picked up my first set about a year ago, almost on a whim, and got hooked faster than I expected to.
My job is intellectually demanding and mostly happens in front of a screen. I wanted something that let me relax without asking much of me, and wasn’t just another form of screen time, doom-scrolling or another Netflix episode. Following Lego instructions is close to mindless once you’re in it, easy enough that I can listen to music or an audiobook and just be somewhere else for a while. It gives me something my job rarely does: an actual finish line. A set gets built, and it’s done, in a way a lot of my real work never quite is.
A set gets built, and it’s done, in a way a lot of my real work never quite is.
I won’t pretend to find the finished models beautiful, that’s not really the draw. Once a set is built, it goes one of three ways: my kids take it apart and play with the pieces, I sell it completed on Facebook Marketplace for a fraction of what I paid, or, occasionally, it earns a spot somewhere in the house. The Claude Monet “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies” set sits in my office.
A Gizmo statue from the Gremlins Lego Ideas line lives on one of our built-ins, mostly because it gives a little contrast against decor that otherwise leans pretty traditional. My kids have a few in their rooms too. None of it is a focal point, and we’re careful about that, but there are tactful ways to work a finished set into a room, and every so often one earns it.
Mostly, though, they don’t stick around, and that’s fine. The joy is in building it, not in keeping it. Once it’s done, I’m already thinking about the next one.