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Subject: 
Sorting and Creativity
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.storage
Date: 
Tue, 4 Apr 2000 01:58:15 GMT
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One thing I have worried a little bit is whether the way I sort would
inhibit creativity (either by hiding parts or by making it take too long to
find parts). I'm happy to say that my sorting methods in no way inhibited my
creativity when I created my Blacktron I MOC (see
http://www.mindspring.com/~ffilz/Lego/space-creations.html - warning - there
are about 770k worth of pictures there).

I found it quite easy to find the parts I needed.

My sorting scheme is that the bulk of my pieces are sorted by size, but not
color, and stored in 1 quart and 1 gallon Hefty One Zip Freezer Bags (with a
few ZipLoc bags, but I like the slider better on the Hefty bags). Basic
bricks are also sorted by color. In some cases, rare colors are sorted
separately from the rest of the bunch (esp. in plates, each rare color has a
bag or two of plates). Large plates are also sorted by color, but not
completely by size (somewhat similar sizes are stored together, depending on
how many plates of a given color I have). The bags are stored in LEGO tubs,
some plastic drawer units, and other boxes and tubs. The tubs all have
somewhat similar parts (for example, all 1x1 and 1x2 bricks are in one tub,
all 1xY plates are in a drawer [well 2 drawers]).

For parts which I have small quantities of, they are stored in boxes similar
to the Plano boxes everyone talks about here. I use the brand Target sells,
which has twice as many positions for dividers as the Plano boxes, and the
dividers fit more firmly. Within compartments, the sorting scheme is similar
to the bags, and again, a box will have similar parts in it. I also have
some various smaller boxes with fixed dividers.

One weird thing though was that in the end, for basic bricks, during my
construction I used my over flow buckets (one contains 1x1, 1x2, 1x3, and
1x4 bricks, the other contains 2x2, 2x3, and 2x4 bricks [well, there's a
third overflow bucket which contains used basic bricks, and then there's the
bucket of discolored and dinged bricks]).

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the disaster my building area was
in because my digital camera was full, and by the time I realized it might
be neat to take pictures, it was impossible to get to the computer. I had
bags of all the various parts I was using scattered about, plus the small
parts boxes, but scattered discarded pieces on the floor. Just a big mess!

When we had a get together Sunday night, Cary Clark mentioned that he uses
those cabinets with the little drawers, but found he couldn't see into the
drawers very well, and had to attach a sample brick to each drawer. One
advantage my system has is that the bags are fairly easy to see into (and
very easy to shift parts around in to find what you need). The number of
tubs I have is modest enough that it's fairly easy to remember which tub has
which parts (though a few parts have migrated from one tub to another as
tubs fill, and I have no idea where my yellow inflatable rafts got off to, I
used to have one container of rowboats, canoes, and rafts, but it
overflowed, and now there is a container of rowboats, and a container of
canoes, but no rafts [well actually I do have a container of rafts, but it's
new, started when I couldn't find where the rafts were]). I wonder if
there's any parts which actually have two locations?

Frank



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Sorting and Creativity
 
(...) This is part of my problem...my collection has gotten so big as to be unmanageable. I am working on a heiarchy to aid sorting and organization...there should be another post on this ng tonight on the topic. Rob (24 years ago, 3-Jul-00, to lugnet.storage)
  Re: Sorting and Creativity
 
(...) Well, I have been looking at the heiarchy Todd uses in AUCZILLA. Brick height. Rectangle. Non-Rectangle. Modified Brick. Plate height. Rectangle. Non-Rectangle. Modified plate. Tile. Rectangle. Non-Rectangle. Modified Tile. Animal. Plant. (...) (24 years ago, 5-Jul-00, to lugnet.storage)

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