Organization

[Master Blobicus]

Admins again feal free to lock this, because it might have been done before

Ok everyone here we go. in my life of LEGO I have often had space problems, and storage problems. If you have any thing like this I urge you to tell me what your clostes, desks, and other working places are like.

here are mine
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=101467

I know I am not organized, but hey, gimme a break I'm 13!

Thanks for looking,
MB

[The Tennis Ball Kid]

Our Gracious Leader wrote:

Admins again feal free to lock this, because it might have been done before

Yes, this was done before, here,and here

Ok everyone here we go. in my life of LEGO I have often had space problems, and storage problems. If you have any thing like this I urge you to tell me what your clostes, desks, and other working places are like.

here are mine
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=101467

I know I am not organized, but hey, gimme a break I'm 13!

Hey, it looks better than what I had when I was 13. ( which was this box with all my LEGO stuffed inside.)

[jwcbigdog]

I'm kinda new here too Blobicus, but a trick that I have learned in the last week is to use the search function at the top under the banner to look in previous threads before I post my own.

To answer your question, I like the look of the clear plastic dresser-like drawers for organization. They aren't all that expensive!!

[Jojo]

Hello!


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


Bye
Jojo

[TheOrk]

I am nearly 14 so I have a limited collection...
But every flat surface of my bedroom is covered in LEGO.
Including my floor and my bed. When I go to bed I brush the stuff on the bed off.

[J1A3L5]

Well, I'm going to quote myself quoting myself...

Forester, the following post I posted on another forum to a friend of mine asking about sorting,

Important things in my mind:

-Sorting by colour isn't very useful. In my experience when you have a collection just sorted by colour, it doesn't help at all. Unless you're trying to build an MOC out of only a couple colours. Pieces just blend in with others when they're all the same. I do sort some pieces by colour though, such as smaller plates (Under 2x6 in size) by colour somewhat. Such as all grey/dk grey 1x6's together, all black and white together, and the rest together. Just whatever makes it most useful and easiest. I also very finely sort some pieces such as 1x1 plate high pieces.
Here is an example of my 1x1 round plates sorted out. These boxes I got from a store called Michaels (sp?) for $2 Canadian each. (And yes, for your information there ARE over 600 grey ones...)

-Be careful with ziplocks. I only sometimes use these for pieces which I don't want circulated into my main collection. From a few bricklink orders I had some of these high-quality small ziplocks which work great, but the average ones get punctured easily.

-Don't even try to sort every little part. Have a misc bin for all those odd parts that you might only have a few of, and are fairly large, and you probably don't use that often. Sadly, my misc bin has been getting larger as LEGO gets more pre-made pieces...

-Put pieces you know you'll use often easily accessable or separate. I personally use a lot of grey (Spaceships, buildings, castle stuff...all use grey). So I have all my grey bricks and lots of my grey/dk grey plates separated out. It makes it much easier and shows you exactly what you have to work with.

-Minifig stuff. They have so many accessories it's hard to keep it all straight. I used to have them loosely sorted (All headgear somewhere, all tools somewhere, etc). Then I got a bit over-excited about it with these cheap containers I got and finely sorted them. I really wouldn't recommend this unless you really really want to. Tools, hats, hair & some weapons.

-Minifigs themselves. Depends whether you want to mix and match often or not. I find these the most annoying part of the whole sorting business. Finding a single head out of hundreds is really annoying. What I do is have my heads stacked separated in columns of 10. This makes them fairly easy to look through. Torsos and legs are together in another place. I don't remove hands or arms or anything, except I do have some misc ones from other places that don't have torsos or anything to go with them. And then hands I bought extra anyway. I think they're in the 1x1 round pic up there already.

One pic: Here's the most useful part of my sorting system. The only problem with them, is that at full price those containers are quite expensive and not quite worth it. Luckily I managed to get them on sale for fairly cheap. (If you look closely there are a couple different types in there, different size handles and a couple other differences.)

Finally, my advice would be to start off small and work up. Start with the most important pieces that you use often, and concentrate on them. Then move on to less important parts.

Hope that helps.

All that said, I am hoping to make a sort of sorting tutorial or maybe How-To article on it sometime soon. Using labelled photos of my collection and stuff.

I will add a bit to the point about ziplocks: I found some which rock. I got them from a few bricklink sellers, and they're higher-quality ones. A pic of them can be seen here.

Other misc pics of my sorted (And unsorted) collection can be seen here, if you're interested.

I also have my commonly used bricks sorted now, too. I have a tub of grey 2x4's, a tub of other regular grey bricks, and a tub of dark grey and brown bricks.

Hope that helps you a bit.

That was in another of the threads that was linked to above.

I might also add I've organized LEGO for as long as I can remember: Basically since I'd have LEGO. (About when it outgrew a shoe-box worth, I started organizing it!)

[Master Blobicus]

Tanks

[rogue27]

I am nearly 14 so I have a limited collection...
But every flat surface of my bedroom is covered in LEGO.
Including my floor and my bed. When I go to bed I brush the stuff on the bed off.

If every flat surface in your room is covered in LEGO, then you're doing it all wrong. Every flat surface in your room should be covered with shelves, and the shelves should be covered with LEGO!


Seriously, I think it is really important to have a lot of easy to reach shelves near your building area. On the shelves, I put cabinets with lots of small removable drawers, so I can quickly grab drawers containing the parts I need and bring them to the building table. The shelves are also used to display things I've built.