Paging #Lego experts. How do you organise and sort bricks? This *feels* like there should be an optimal, systematic method for finding what you need.
We've got about 45 years worth of Lego and are trying to sort, especially for ones where we have the instruction booklets. Some sets are partially intact from kiddo's shelf, but we will need to ensure all parts are there before we can move these on.
E.g. purely by colour? Types e.g. plates and standard blocks, and then colour / size for all the random tiny pieces?
@whatsie Longer term, yes, I recognise colour alone is going to be pure evil. Not yet sure if she will continue once this clearout is done.
@NotYourSysadmin Cheers, I guess the problem we have is there are so many *types*, so hard to work out less than a dozen categories even at first go.
@davoloid Sort it by shape first. Color spotting is way easier than shape spotting.
@davoloid Sorting by colour is a rookie mistake. It's easy to pull out a yellow brick from a sea of blue ones, way harder to find a 2x1 brick in a big pile of larger ones.
@Cougar Yeah, now we've done about half of it, I have an idea of main categories. E.g. Tiny pingfuckits, big foot killers, miscellaneous thingamabobs, bizarro space widgets and unusually coloured fauna.
@davoloid Did you get "pingfuckit" from me? That's a -very- niche term.
@Cougar Long experience racking servers ;)
@davoloid I see you already have lots of useful answers. I can add “it depends” 😂 If you’re still unsure about which way to go, I can recommend this article for some excellent insight https://brickarchitect.com/guide/bricks/
@cazmockett One thing's for sure, we definitely need more flexible/granular storage containers!
@davoloid yeah. You can end up spending almost as much on plastic to store plastic as you do on the actual plastic 😂
@davoloid this is A Whole Thing. Purely by color is a phase everyone seems to go through and regret… finding the 1x1 plate you need in a bucket of red is miserable.
“By shape” is the ultimate answer, and how you subcategorize within that is up to you. The ones with a ton of Lego will often have a dedicated bucket/drawer/whatever for every distinct shape. For a smaller collections (or smaller storage) maybe you say “all tiles” and “all bricks smaller than 2x3” etc but that’s your call.