#Lego, Ikea team up on furniture line to get kids to clean up toys

Parents have long pleaded with and punished children over their messy rooms, but a new collaboration between Lego and Ikea aims to turn picking up toys into playtime.

The Swedish home-design company called their new furniture range, Bygglek, a “playful storage solution” that will engage kids in the cleaning process with the help of the Danish toy brand.

In a joint press release, the companies said that chores “not only disrupt [children’s] play but also their creative expression and growth.” Their failure to comply, meanwhile, disrupts their exasperated caretakers’ sanity.

Andreas Fredriksson, a designer at Ikea, touted the “power of play.”

“Play lets us explore, experiment, dream and discover,” Fredriksson said. “Where adults often see mess, children see a stimulating creative environment, and Bygglek will help bridge the gap between these two views to ensure more creative play in homes around the world.”

Rasmus Buch Løgstrup, designer at the Lego Group, added that the Bygglek line is “more than boxes.”

“It is storage and play intertwined. Bygglek provides families with a product range that helps create space for more play in their everyday [lives] — fueling creativity, making it possible to have more fun together,” he said. “It’s a possibility to play, display the cool creations and return to it to replay, remake, re-create or start over.”

The build-it-yourself storage set includes chests in various sizes that are molded with Lego boards, allowing children to create various characters and landscapes across their toy boxes. Prices for the Ikea x Lego Bygglek line start at $9.99, not including the 201-piece Lego brick set for $14.99, available in Ikea stores and online on Oct. 1.

A survey of Ikea shoppers, titled the Ikea Play Report, revealed that almost half of children want more playtime with their parents, while a majority — 90% — of parents agreed that play is critical to kids’ physical and mental health. A separate Lego Play Well study found that 8 in 10 parents actually believe a messy space encourages children’s creativity.

Nevertheless, half of those surveyed by Lego also said they couldn’t help tidying up around their kids, even during playtime.