http://thebrickbutcher.blogspot.com/2009/06/episode-004-sorting-and-storage-of-your.html

But that’s about to change. I’m so, unbelievably excited to have the plasterers coming in to start the refit of new workspace…. oh the joy, the pure joy at thinking about how to order all the LEGO and art materials etc. Long working tables, tonnes of shelfspace. Oooh, can’t wait.

Thanks for the links lads. Food for thought as the collection is ordered for ease of use.

And Legosoap, there are some female AFOLs out there, with a geek thing for ordering bricks; don’t give up hope :)

There is the part of me that wants to go back in time and scare 10-year-old-me into sorting early – and resisting the urge to deposit parts of action figures Tyco (shudder) bricks, and a myriad of other non-Lego stuff into the massive bins I used as a child.

I’m currently using gallon storage bags as I really have no idea how much storage I’ll need until I get through a few phases of sorting. Here’s hoping I get to start building before I am an old man.

Great post – thanks for the info :D

“That brings us to one of the other truths about sorting and organizing your collection: It will depend on your personality, patience and what you like to build.”

This is absolutely the truth and I think a lot of it depends on how you build. Gambort had a great idea of sorting by ‘usefulness’ which I would have never thought to do. But I really like his idea of adapting your sorting method to your building style. A very interesting concept.

I think sorting also becomes more of an issue the larger your collection becomes and the larger the MOC’s you build get. Sorting for me serves two major functions. First, it gives me a more manageable way to find the piece I need amongst our 350,000 elements. Second, it offers me a way to gauge a ‘re-order’ point on various pieces. Every so often I go through our drawers, buckets, etc. and make a list of what pieces/colors we are low on for when I place Bricklink orders. If our stuff wasn’t sorted, I would have no way to know I am low on 2×2 Light Grey Tiles again. :-)

It seems everyone has offered some good ideas for sorting containers, but you might consider custom made systems that use common parts. I built a custom wood rack for the smaller Plano totes that I think is wicked handy and then incorporated it into Stacy’s LEGO workbench. You can check out pictures here:

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/101733

It would be easy to adapt something similar to other sorting bins or to make it a wall mounted unit. You might also consider some of the cool IKEA storage solutions. They have so much I don’t even know where to begin, but there are a lot of useful solutions there as well.

When I started buying new sets, I was worried about the pieces scratching each other in storage, so I was storing the bricks stuck together and inside ziplock bags so they couldn’t easily scratch each other.

Then I read a few articles about the “grip strength” or “clutch power” decreasing over time with bricks stored in this manner, so I pulled them all apart again (I believe that this will happen and is due to stress relaxation in the plastic).

I now keep parts loose in containers (mostly tackle boxes and small plastic containers) or in zip-lock bags in plastic containers. Storing parts loose in big containers is going to cause lots of scratches and general dulling of the parts, generally undesirable unless you are into apocalego :).

Has anybody here experienced a loss of grip from LEGO stored connected for a long time?

Also, in general I can’t overemphasize the importance of sorting by shape first, then color. While there are limited circumstances where breaking things out by color makes sense–when you have few parts in a single unusual color, for instance, or when you use a lot of a particular color for a theme–the fact is that the human brain identifies color much more quickly than shape, making it much quicker to visually pick a particular color out of a bin of like shapes than vice-versa.

When I fisrt realized that my LEGO was growing beyond the primitive sorting system I was using I googled LEGO sorting methods. This article by Remy Evard at Lugnet cracked me up and helped lighten the mood when it came to what felt like an impossible task.

http://news.lugnet.com/storage/?n=707

For the last 2 years or so I have followed the following sorting system:

I have storage drawers/towers that are filled with bricks.

Each drawer(s) has only 1 color in it. For example I have 2 drawers full of yellow. The top drawer contains the smaller parts such as plates, odds like plates with clips, rounds, tiles, etc.) The bottom yellow drawer contains the larger parts like 1x and 2x bricks.

Inside each drawer are gallon ziploc bags that contain 1 family of parts (1xn plates which are bagged separately in snack or sandwich size bags).

This has served me well over the last 2 years or so. Here is a pic of my storage units:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/notenoughbricks/3341865531/in/set-72157615037680272/

This article on LEGO.com can also help you decide which method to use:
http://www.lego.com/eng/create/designschool/lesson.asp?id=4_c

Thanel, this topic is a great way for us to share our sorting dilemmas and solutions. Great article.

but but but…. which came first – the AFOL or the wife? I’m an AFOL but have no wife… am i doomed for singularity? meh

Great collection and ideas though. My bricks are all in colour order… but i am now thinking that maybe, in these long cold dark english winter nights, that i might re-sort them all.

Also, I only recommend tackle boxes if you either have a lot of floor space or some pretty decent shelving. Or if you like picking up a thousand plus pounds of LEGO when you want to use the room for something else.

There are two of us using the system, and it’s difficult to set rules.

I’m now planning on making a part inventory straight from Lego Digital Designer and print it out. Label my boxes and drawers. I don’t have transparent drawers so finding a piece usually involves opening a few of them.

But it’s working and when building I can find parts pretty fast. No major projects yet, though.

I went through about four different sorting methods after my dark ages and have now settled on a system with various types of brick discriminability. By part, part groups, theme, colour, colour groups, size, old (pre-dark age, dull) or new (shiny), and so on. All depending on the quantity of a part and the box size.
Nobody else would be able to sort stuff into it properly, but it works perfectly for me.

Try thinning it down to just 2×2 plates, then bag these by color, and you should be good to go!