Organising your Lego

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Discussion

popegregory

Original Poster:

1,533 posts

141 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
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Evening team. My six year old has more Lego than you can shake the metaphorical at and it’s all stored in one of those big drawstring bags in the lounge. Naturally this means that trying to build one of his sets takes forever and usually ends up slightly hybrid when you can’t find the bit you need. How do the Lego fans on here organise their bricks? I originally thought by colour but sensed that being a disaster, so thought by similar brick type? And what do you use for storage that holds it but is not too bulky? Cheers all.

SydneyBridge

9,399 posts

165 months

xcesx

135 posts

159 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
Ours hasn’t been out of the loft for a a while now but we sorted it by brick type in to whatever box, bag, tin or tub it suited. All then stored in a big storage box with lid.
We used the Stanley organisers for the Technic spares or the odd full model.

popegregory

Original Poster:

1,533 posts

141 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
SydneyBridge said:
Winner, thanks, (but not this, the smaller one they do I think).

egomeister

6,866 posts

270 months

Sunday 11th October 2020
quotequote all
Really Useful boxes? Plenty of choice in sizes, some can be fitted with divider trays and often available on the high street.

https://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/uk/html/box...


Murph7355

38,884 posts

263 months

Monday 12th October 2020
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Just been through this as my youngest is becoming a big Lego fan.

I ordered some of these



Ordered the 11-drawer size as two of them fit nicely in an Ikea Kallax unit.

You do have to make sure you don't brim fill the drawers as they can then be awkward to get out, but they work well.

We've taken to sorting them by colour. As the collection grows I think we'll then further break that down into type of parts.

lufbramatt

5,425 posts

141 months

Monday 12th October 2020
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much easier to sort by brick type than colour! harder for your eyes to pick out shapes in a sea of same colour parts than it is to pick out a colour from a bunch of parts that are the same shape.

james_TW

16,330 posts

204 months

Wednesday 14th October 2020
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I just use the IKEA Kallax units and the fabric esque boxes - They work pretty well. I ought to sort the lego by colour and all the rest of it, but emptying it out on to the floor (sheet) and doing it that way works well enough. I have 5 full boxes...

However, my technic is kept separate and better organised...

BlueMR2

8,724 posts

209 months

Thursday 15th October 2020
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Just realise that alot of adults spend alot of time sorting LEGO for kids who then stop playing with it as they lose the creativity of just putting something together with the bits they can find.

If you want to keep certain sets together, it may be better to take the bits and put them in a grip seal bag once finished playing with it so that it's together, although neither helps building sets that have been absorbed into the bulk LEGO collection.

johnpsanderson

548 posts

207 months

Thursday 15th October 2020
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Yep - interesting thread. We've done a hybrid approach (using a mix of different Curver storage boxes/Kallax storage cubes/random big tupperware type things from The Range (or similar).

1 box for all things Knights and Pirates. We have two castle sets (one 80's, one 2000's) and pretty much built them to ID the bits, then kept them to one side with the other obviously thematically similar bits. All the 'people ' go in with the bricks.

1 box for all the Technic. We have less of this than other stuff.
1 box that all the 'people' get rounded up into as often as we can manage.
1 big rollout underbed storage unit into which loose bits/the last project get dumped.

And then boxes where we've sorted purely by colour for the main colours (red/white/black/yellow/grey/blue) For grey i've even split out all 'flat' plates into a separate box - as there are so many grey ones, and they get in the way when you're looking for the tiny grey 1x plates with a hook on, etc.

BlueMR2 said:
Just realise that alot of adults spend alot of time sorting LEGO for kids who then stop playing with it as they lose the creativity of just putting something together with the bits they can find.
This is why the big box which holds about 30% of the Lego, in a complete mess, is good. Plenty of random constructions spring from this.

BlueMR2 said:
If you want to keep certain sets together, it may be better to take the bits and put them in a grip seal bag once finished playing with it so that it's together, although neither helps building sets that have been absorbed into the bulk LEGO collection.
The 'castle/pirate' specific box helps - but agreed, we have the Police Station and the Fire Station - both got built once and it's a hell of a task sorting out the parts to try and build them again... Still - we have a long winter ahead!!!


Edited by johnpsanderson on Thursday 15th October 18:14