I'm on step 13, although I have been there since I was about 13years old, I was quite OCD as a child when it came to Lego. I totally skipped the sorting by colour stage, never saw the point in that

D

By color is a good idea if it's combined w/ by type(or general type). By itself, I don't really see that as a good method since it'd be really hard to track done a specific piece in a sea of yellow for example.

I'm at approximately step 11. Good to know where I'm headed.

For reference, have about 17,500 pieces, as close as I can tell. Sorted exclusively by type. Never sorted by color, but I can see sorting by color and size working, perhaps better than by type.

I can honestly say I'm only on step 2.

That is mainly because all my childhood stress are in a pile and everything I've bought since coming out of my dark ages is in set form. I am very anal about my organization.

I'm on step 24.

Thank you very much for sharing this.. really interesting!

(maybe in 10 years this article might pop up again and many people are in different stage.

I think I am in 18. I do not have a categories document, so only I know where the pieces are (and I keep relocating them!)

one thing bothers me that I have 2 young kids, who keep playing sorted LEGO. so my sorting takes forever :(

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

I thought it'd be worth mentioning here as I didn't see this subject when I searched. Lugnet post is a bit over 10 years old but worth reading for humor.

I'm on 14 BTW

I am in the 20s though some of the stuff i dont think i would do.

Right now most things are in their own drawer/bag. i am just now getting to the point where i need overflow bins for certain parts.

Only basic brick is fully sorted by color and type.

At around 50-60,000 bricks it works rather well.

9.

And a brilliant thread haha.

hehe good read.

I'm firmly Stuck at 20 - only because anything more would require me to move into a house...

Though it definitely helps the sorting process to get most pieces from Bricklink – which for most part comes pre-sorted :D

Just need to stack them/add them to the existing baggy.

I think I am in 18. I do not have a categories document, so only I know where the pieces are (and I keep relocating them!)

one thing bothers me that I have 2 young kids, who keep playing sorted LEGO. so my sorting takes forever :(

I know your pain. The NERVE of these kids playing with LEGO instead of treasuring it...My Preciousssss. ;)

I have trained my kids to ask "...is this a really rare piece, can I use it??". HAH. And off they go and cover their cars with 2x4 tiles...sheesh! Use the 1x4's...those are a dime a dozen (or less on BL).

lol, exactly.

but I always try to convince myself that LEGO is supposed to be played with (rather than just to be admired)

and I believe that's where the creation idea start..

I know your pain. The NERVE of these kids playing with LEGO instead of treasuring it...My Preciousssss. ;)

I have trained my kids to ask "...is this a really rare piece, can I use it??". HAH. And off they go and cover their cars with 2x4 tiles...sheesh! Use the 1x4's...those are a dime a dozen (or less on BL).

I have 3 different sorting styles

1/ Older lego in a large bin (for the kids to play with)

2/ Star Wars & Classic Space + some city in plastic zip lock bags with minifig, instructions and parts in their own bag

3/ Technic sorted into colours, type of of parts (eg: length of axel, type of gear and so on)

I'm lucky I have a 2.5m X 2.5m shed (Up side non of my brood want to go into, down side I am running out of wall space )

Edited June 17, 201113 yr by Phantom59

I'm probably only on step 4

I'm about to move quickly through Steps 8-10. Mainly because I spent my winter break digging through my one large rubbermaid bin rebuilding all my childhood sets, only to have a game of Brikwars render it all into the same mess again in the bottom of the bin. Never again! There WILL be sorting...

Having now once again begun sorting, I think I've moved up to #19 now and heading inexorably towards #20.

Seems I skipped a lot of steps. For me, it went:

1. You don't sort your Lego. You just keep them in the box they came in.

3. You give up on individual set boxes and toss all your Lego in a big

storage bin or a Lego denim bag, or a couple of your large set boxes. You

become very familiar with the sound of someone digging through large bricks

looking for a 1x1 transparent red plate.

7. You cave in and actually get a storage system. Maybe it's rubbermaid

bins, or piles of blue buckets, or fishing tackle boxes, or ziplocks. But

now you've got a system.

20. Bizarrely enough, you actually give up and go back to sorting by color.

Only this time, you sort by color after sorting by piece. So you now have

a bin for yellow 1x3 plates, and a bin for black 1x3 plates, and so on. (Just starting on this)

11. You have now invented your own Lego categorization system. You have no

doubt separated out bricks, plates, wheels, minifigs, slopes, and so on,

but you've also clumped "things with curves" together, and doors and

windshields together. You also have a category called "misc". Your

categories, amazingly, don't look much like the LDraw categories.

28. Of course, somewhere along the way, you probably quit buying just sets, and

started to do things like:

- Buy lego sets in bulk, to the point where you have 10s to 100s

of unopened boxes.

- Work on very large construction projects.

- Acquire other people's collections.

- Run large auctions over the net.

And those bring up entirely new sorting challenges.... but those won't

be written about tonight, at least not by me.

14. You begin to develop large piles of lego in various states of being

sorted, i.e:

the sorted stuff

the stuff you've kinda sorted and is ready to be put away

piles of lego you aren't going to sort because you think you'll use

it all to build something else anyway

lego sorted some other way than the way you sorted into drawers to see

if this way works better than that way did

your building projects

your new boxes of lego, some opened, some not

oh, and let's not forget your various models and MOCs

16. The original categories you made begin to follow this life cycle:

- They grow too large to fit into their container.

- You divide the category into two categories in order to get them

to fit into the containers... one for each category. (Now you

have windshields, doors, and windows, each as a different category

of pieces, each in their own containers.)

- You store those subcategories together, but as parts of them become

too numerous or too hard to find, you split them out. So your tackle

boxes now have a different compartment for each type of door.

You realize that at this point the endgame is that you will have a

different compartment for every type of piece you have.

16.5. Every once in a while, you open a drawer you haven't opened in a

while and discover that you've been sorting some piece into two separate

places in your drawers. This throws your categorization for a loop.

How exactly do you categorize the 1x2 plate with the little robot-looking

thing on it? Oh no... partsref doesn't have it either, augh!

19. You develop a multi-stage sorting system. It may take a piece several

hops before it ends up in its final resting spot, but it's a bit more

efficient to sort this way, and you can do some of it while watching a

video.

21. Finally you create an "overflow" system of buckets, where, if the bin

of 1x3 yellow plates is full, you just any additional ones into that

overflow bucket, along with other plates. (One of the first indicators that

you should do this was that you didn't have a compartment big enough to hold

all your Lego horses...)

17. You rearrange your house so that you can fit your storage system into,

hopefully, just one room. (I do this every few months )

22. You begin to toss most pieces directly into overflow. (Just started)

23. You now have what, to a stranger, would be a bizarre sorting system. You

have some parts thrown together in bins by type. You have some parts split

out with a separate bin for each part. You have some parts split out with

a separate bin for each color. You even have some parts split out by how

old they are: red 1x2s from the 60s, red 1x2s from the 70s, new red 1x2s

that hold really well, and all the other red 1x2s. And you have an

alphabetized pile of large buckets for the overflow pieces and another one

for the 1st stage of sorting.

23.5. That stranger would also think you were certifiably insane. Or at

least retentive.

Seems I skipped a lot of steps. For me, it went...

I followed the same path as you brickmack

Recently moved though and got the largest bedroom for my lego room. I've already started sorting/resorting stuff that has been sitting around partially or not sorted at all for a year. Once that is done, I'm planning on attacking all the unopened (or partially canabalized) sets I have neatly stacked in the closet.

My husband saw my closet in the lego room the other day and said "It looks like a lego store back room in here."

I followed the same path as you brickmack

Recently moved though and got the largest bedroom for my lego room. I've already started sorting/resorting stuff that has been sitting around partially or not sorted at all for a year. Once that is done, I'm planning on attacking all the unopened (or partially canabalized) sets I have neatly stacked in the closet.

My husband saw my closet in the lego room the other day and said "It looks like a lego store back room in here."

Heh, that's how my closet looks kinda. I've got about 40 re-sealed (empty) boxes stacked up in a corner, I've got a box of instruction books on the floor, and several of those yellow bags they put stuff in at the register in the LEGO stores. I've also got 5 or 6 PAB cups on the shelf, each full of parts I've sorted but don't often use. It looks rather like the PAB wall and set storage room and register got smashed together.

When it comes to sorting LEGO there is no be all to end all, the only system that will work for you for sorting is one that works for you, some people sort by color, type or even unique lot, you find what works for you in the space you have to work in.

essentially when sorting your LEGO there is no right way or wrong way, just your way.

This sounds so terribly familiar

I don't know how exactly I started, because I started as just a kid getting Lego from his parents. But I do remember once having had a huge orange wooden box (about 70x60x20 cm) with 16 compartiments that contained all my Lego, the smallest compartment only containing four blue 2 x 10 plates. And I do remember having had a sorting system by color for years, using ten large bins: white, yellow, gray, red, blue, black, baseplates, wheels, train tracks, misc. And I was slowing moving into Technic so I needed separate boxes for those, also starting out by color. As Technic grew and got more versatile, I frequently rearranged and expanded. And I do remember thinking about sorting by type, and finally taking that decision. A few years ago I bought 24 (yes) identical boxes for everything Technic and special parts (like tiles, SNOT pieces, ...) and re-invented my sorting system. And recently I created overflow bins for Technic pins...

And two weeks ago I started splitting some of my Technic parts by type. Right now I don't even have bins for those yet, still thinking what to do with them... And I'm starting to have the problem that I can't really build anything serious in the studded system because I use the studless system more and there's not enough working space to have both in reach at once! Guess I have to sacrifice studded building for the time being. And this is unfortunate because every once in a while I love to have some studded construction instead of just studless Technic...

So yeah. Pretty much the same as in the starting post

Edit: by the way, there's right now exactly one spot in my sorting system where i sort by color: all transparant parts are together

Edited June 30, 201113 yr by Erik Leppen

28. aka the "Uncle Scrooge" state: you've spent so much time with your trillions of Lego bricks that you know the history of each of them by heart; it's become a natural concept for you that no two apparently identical e.g. 1x2 red plates are actually the same and could never be confused with one another; you can now easily locate any one of them by smell.

When it comes to sorting LEGO there is no be all to end all, the only system that will work for you for sorting is one that works for you, some people sort by color, type or even unique lot, you find what works for you in the space you have to work in.

essentially when sorting your LEGO there is no right way or wrong way, just your way.

I'm sure the majority of EB probably agrees with this statement, but I think you've misunderstood the purpose of the topic. We're not discussing the best way to sort. We're just tracking our progress as compared to a humorous general timeline of the stages of LEGO sorting that most people go through. (and no matter how you prefer to sort right now, you're somewhere in that list, and if your collection keeps growing, chances are you'll move up that list)

I'm sure the majority of EB probably agrees with this statement, but I think you've misunderstood the purpose of the topic. We're not discussing the best way to sort. We're just tracking our progress as compared to a humorous general timeline of the stages of LEGO sorting that most people go through. (and no matter how you prefer to sort right now, you're somewhere in that list, and if your collection keeps growing, chances are you'll move up that list)

Or depending on your methods, backwards, waay forwards, sideways (as in using a method completely different from anything described in the list), or perhaps you just go mad from trying to sort and the universe implodes.

I just want to say how much I laughed at the original post. Not only because I saw myself on the list but because I could see myself following along the list in the future. So much truth in there.

When it comes to sorting LEGO there is no be all to end all, the only system that will work for you for sorting is one that works for you, some people sort by color, type or even unique lot, you find what works for you in the space you have to work in.

essentially when sorting your LEGO there is no right way or wrong way, just your way.

This post was more of a 'see the humor' in the original posting, if you want a post that is SPECIFICALLY about HOW people are sorting and storing their parts (and sometime WHY they are that way) see the following post (former sticky post I believe):

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26213

This post was more of a 'see the humor' in the original posting, if you want a post that is SPECIFICALLY about HOW people are sorting and storing their parts (and sometime WHY they are that way) see the following post (former sticky post I believe):

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26213

I did, as it goes my bad, as to where I am in sorting well I sort down to the specific piece type and have a rather extensive collection so it keeps me busy.