Welcome to October!

‘Tis the season for harvesting (souls), (demonic) candy (possessions), and (occasionally) family friendly (occult) thrills. In this month, people pay good money to be scared witless at haunted houses and theme parks— but you’re an AFOL, and I know you have other plans for your spare change, so I’ve prepared a special and absolutely free terrifying tour of my own LEGO Room of Horrors!

Protected by a flock of dragons and presided over by the sensibilities of Hieronymus Bosch, my disaster zone of a LEGO space is cobbled together like Frankenstein’s monster. My build area looks like a crime scene, and my lack of acro-mills will insert a horrifying itch that can’t be scratched into your OCD heart! Dim the lights, grab a can dle and flam e and follow me…

Watch your feet! It gets messy when I build.

(Also when I don’t.)

FREE! My favorite price. Look at this FREE furniture on the side of the road! While I could, in theory, plan a trip to IKEA and design a layout that would make a Stepford wife proud, remember: I already have other plans for my spare change. Now, back to this random corner in the desert. Who would divest themselves of such a useful chest of drawers? Is there, perhaps, a curse on this delicious dresser? No need to think too hard on that. I have LEGO that needs to be sorted. Leave the body parts in the drawers behind. it’s my lucky day!

My “LEGO room”, commonly known as “the den”, is populated with almost-free furniture. A few pieces I bought at a yard sale ($30) for use as baby furniture many years ago. But since I no longer need a changing table or onesie storage, I exorcized the diaper demons and brought the furniture up to sorting code. A fresh coat of paint, building block tape edgings, and festive handles all work to hide the furniture’s garish, ghoulish past.

The furniture is mismatched and tacky and not at all in-line with human tastes. It’s filled with things that are “Danish”, and it is technically “Modern”, but no sorcery can make it Danish Modern.

Form does follow function, however. It works for jazz (in a minor key), it’s real wood (not particle board) and the undead tell no tales. A can of paint does wonders. The LEGO room is gray, because gray is the color of choice for goths… pastel goths, that is. On the outside, these drawers look like a normal person’s drawers, don’t they? Almost. A possessed doll surely lurks near.

(Those utensil handles are both a Duke Ellington reference - “A knife and a fork to spoon with.” - and for defense against the dark arts.)

Alas, some of my LEGO furniture is so possessed that the drawers can’t even close. Each brick is a trapped soul, kept in Ziploc. (This phenomenon ebbs and flows with building MOCs and trips to the pick a brick wall.)

Yes, I keep my brick in chests of drawers. Armoires of ABS. Dressers of dots. I tried Sterilite for a spell (from a yard sale, natch) and hated it. It was nowhere durable enough for the constant openings and closings of the creative spirits.

Several chests of drawers I literally dragged home, like zombie corpses. This one, however, I “inherited” from a spirit who had consistently insulted my love for LEGO. Like a vampire armed with bites of negativity, they sucked away my will to brick. They reacted to the joy I found in AFOL camaraderie with eye rolls and hisses, as if I were praising the rising sun... I put silver handles on this dresser, doused it with holy water, and filled it with brick. I am not a vengeful spirit, but when the moon is round and my heart is full of evil - I admit - I sift my fingers through wedge plates and cackle at the irony.

Oh - How did that broom get there? It’s certainly not for cleaning messes. Must be a witch around.

While my hodgepodge of hard goods may look a fright, chaos doesn’t actually run the day. The elements in my drawers are fairly well sorted and accessible, thanks to the fiendishly wonderful labeling system developed by Brick A rchitec t. Because I am cheap, I print them out on paper and Scotch Tape them to the drawers. The locations of elements can change, as I accumulate more of a certain kind and they move to a larger drawer, so many drawers are soiled with the remnant spirits of previous labels. The devil is in the details.

I’ll admit: some drawers are easier to navigate than others. Ziploc can only work a Ziploc-level spell, and some categories take more space than others. On the order of good magic, though, a friend found dots on clearance for me at some point during the pandemic, and the dots containers helped me bring my collections of clips and hinges in line for a good haunting. Also, these takeout containers from the Indian restaurant are brilliant. The lids clip on tightly so they don’t spill their SNOTty contents, even when surly demons (or cats) knock them to the floor. Three cheers for malai kofta!

Raising the dead? That’s the theme of the day. These specialized drawers no longer hold compact discs; instead they hold tiles. These had been painted to match the living room, however, and therefore clash horribly here among the undead…

Some LEGO elements defy my mortal attempts at sorting. (Or they did before they showed up on Brick Architect, and I haven’t had the spirit to fix them.) For those bits, we summon the magic of the 99c store. The organizers below were a frightening $1.99 each. Here is where my sorting system decays like so many coffins full of flesh. When an element did not fit neatly into a category, I assigned it my own unholy division, such as “Food” (which, somehow, includes umbrellas), “hands and handles” (half of which belongs with clips and bars), “teeth and claws” (watch your fingers!), “weaponry”, and “blingy bits” - the latter will attract a MURDER (of crows).

I also use these kinds of bins to sort my technic. But that’s a whole other kind of magic.

My minifigs are mostly a mess (in a drawer) but I pulled these out for a project last year, and I never put them away. They have proven useful in this configuration. When I deal with minifigs, I usually cannibalize them for individual body parts; I keep these poor figs lined up like a zombie army, ready to give their limbs at a moment’s notice.

This room may reflect the soul of a cheapskate, but there’s always an exception to the rule. I recently purchased these Trofast shelves with actual money. They significantly improved my #foreversorting nightmare… but, it turns out, THESE are the cursed shelves! A black cat has crossed our path! I suggest we let him remain in slumber… and tiptoe quietly away… you’ve seen enough of my messes for today, but you have lived to tell the tale!

The horror. The horror.

Do you have a horrifying sorting story to tell? Have you ever picked up furniture on the side of the road? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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