Subject:
|
Re: the evolution of lego sorting
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.storage
|
Date:
|
Sun, 7 Jan 2001 04:41:39 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
8371 times
|
| |
|
|
Remy Evard wrote:
>
> Here's a description of an evolution of lego collection sorting. It might
> be yours, at least in parts. It's certainly been mine.
My evolution was:
1. sorting by size, I forget what I did with the non-bricks
2. sorting bricks by size and color, same color grouped together, still
not sure how other parts were sorted
3. realized it's a pain to find the bag of yellow 1x2s amongst all the
other bags of yellow bricks so changed bins to group by size,
somewhere's by now the other parts are stored in small parts boxes
(Plano and other brands), larger parts stored in bags and compartments
of other storage
4. parts start to overflow small parts boxes bins
5. numerous cycles of things overflowing causing sorting to get more
specific and many re-arrangings of bins
6. eventually bricks started overflowing, so overflow bags were created
7. overflow bags are a pain to get to (stored in the other room) so an
overflow bucket is used
8. plates start to overflow
9. bins no longer all fit in work area, less interesting parts moved to
other parts of the room (most storage is still in my living/dining room)
10. overflow bucket overflows, brick overflow eventually gets more
specifically sorted (1x1s, white and black 1x2s and 1x4s,
red/blue/yellow 1x2s, red/blue/yellow 1x4s,
red/white/blue/yellow/black/grey 1x6s, red/white/blue/yellow/black/grey
1x8s, 2x2/2x3/2x4 bricks, 2x6/2x8 bricks, grey overflow in inconvenient
bags
11. to deal with the storage which isn't in the work area, various boxes
get used to hold various classes of parts
> 1. You don't sort your Lego. You just keep them in the box they came in.
>
> (Then, over time, you get another set, then another, then another.
> And your pile of bricks grows. How do you cope?)
This really didn't happen for me. I started sorting almost immediately.
> 4. You begin to sort your Lego by category: normal-looking bricks in one
> set box, other pieces in another box.
My storage system almost immediately made a fair amount of
differentiation.
> 8. You grow weary of digging through all the yellow bricks looking for that
> one specialized yellow piece somewhere in 2 cubic feet of yellow. But you
> think of how much work it's going to take to split by part and you don't do
> it.
Having all the bricks of the same color together lasted only a week or
so, and even then, they were separated by size, it was just that all the
bags for a given color were in the same bin.
> 9. Sorting becomes difficult enough that you decide, in some cases, not to
> break some sets down and put them in your main pile of lego... instead, you
> store them as a set, because that set is so cool just the way it is. (Ok,
> so this set is from the 80s...) The pieces for that set are either in their
> box, or in a ziplock or something. Congratulations, you've just invented
> Set Archiving, and now you have two ways you store your Lego: broken down
> by parts, and archived by set.
I have almost no sets archived in this way (though I have an overflow of
builtup sets on shelves, tables, or any other semi-flat surface).
> 10. You give up and decide to sort your parts by type rather than by color.
> You go get more bins or tackle boxes or whatever your container of choice
> is, you dedicate an evening or a weekend or a month to it, and you split by
> type.
I started sorting by type early enough that it only took an evening to
re-sort.
> 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.
My categories have definitely mutated over time. Mostly they have gotten
more specific, but some have just been re-arranged.
> 13. Your collection is now clearly housed in many different types of
> containers ranging from buckets to drawers to bins to individual tackle box
> components.
I have:
- stacks of small parts boxes, with numerous compartments in each of
varying size
- tubs/bins/boxes/drawers containing resealable bags (Ziploc or Hefty
One Zip)
- occaisionally tubs have some loose parts at the bottom under the bags
- a few parts are loose in their own tubs
- small technic parts are in small parts boxes stored in a large tackle
box, the bins on top of the tackle box hold the electric parts, hoses,
etc, plus smaller small parts boxes of connectors or other very small
parts, a box sits on top holding bags of beams etc.
I find the resealable bag a very effective container. They are
reasonably efficiently packed into a tub, and it is relatively easy to
fluff them around to get the specific part or color you want up to the
top. I mostly use freezer strength quart and gallon sizes (and wish the
Hefty One Zip brand came in a 1/2 quart or smaller bag).
It is fairly easy to remember which tub holds which general type of
part.
> 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
>
> 15. You begin to develop strong opinions on Plano vs. Stak-On and
> Rubbermaid vs. Sterilite.
This happened pretty fast. I quickly decided Plano wasn't very good (the
dividers kept falling out, also the brand I found at Target had twice as
many divider positions, the new Plano with twice as many divider
positions works about 99% as good as the Target ones). Hefty One Zip
resealable bags are much better than the Ziploc Slideloc bags, the Hefty
slider is much less likely to run off the end of the track.
> 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!
I've only once or twice discovered I had multiple containers for the
same part (on the other hand, I'm at a loss as to where my original
container of yellow rubber rafts went, so I may still have two
containers of those). My categorization seems to be about 95% effective,
though right after a re-categorization, I sometimes fumble for the right
tub. Note that this is actually all accomplished without any labeling of
the containers.
> 17. You rearrange your house so that you can fit your storage system into,
> hopefully, just one room.
90% of my sorted collection actually is still in one room, though I need
to re-organize to gather it closer together. The only stuff in the other
room is:
- printed, raised, and 32x32 or larger baseplates
- train track
- buckets of used bricks and discolored parts
- Most Scala stuff
Stuff which did at one time live in the other room:
- overflow bricks
- Belville stuff
> 18. You give up on the "one compartment for every piece" theory because you
> can't keep up with that. Instead, you start putting some of the similar
> things into shoebox-sized bins. The way you decide what to
> compartmentalize and what to put into bins together is to think about how
> long it takes to find an individual element. It's ok to dig through a pile
> of windshields looking for the trans yellow blacktron hood. It's not ok to
> dig through a pile of slopes looking for the specialized corner cap slope.
I haven't uncategorized much if anything yet.
> 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.
Multi-stage sorting is definitely a time saver. Most efficient 1st stage
sorting requires that each bin is reachable without moving very far and
without lifting up a box to get at the bins underneath (though some
stacking doesn't kill efficiency so long as you try and get all the
stuff for the bottom bin at the same time).
> 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...)
Hmm, haven't overflowed the box of horses in a long time (it once was in
a tissue box in a draw, now is in a 12"x18"x4" box which is close to
full. Bricks were the first to overflow. Most plates are now
overflowing. Overflow is relatively sorted (I recently sorted the large
plates overflow).
> 22. You begin to toss most pieces directly into overflow.
For some sets, definitely most of the volume goes straight into overflow
(black, blue, and grey 4x4 or larger plates, black and blue 2xY plates,
grey 2xY plates, all 1xY plates except 1x10 and 1x3 (the 1xY plates
actually effectively have a dual storage system, I probably need to
merge it and sort by size and color completely), most bricks (all but
1x3, 2x10, 1x10 or longer, 4x6 or larger), wheels.
> 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.
I've been there for quite some time...
> - Work on very large construction projects.
Started one large project, it's currently stalled.
> - Acquire other people's collections.
Done this once. That collection is still waiting to be fully processed.
For some stupid reason, despite the fact that I have determined that it
almost never is worthwhile re-building sets from a sorted collection, I
still am saving these to be built into sets.
You forgot another step: the one where your life revolves around buying
and sorting and you almost never build anything.
There's also another thing which causes a hitch in the system. If you
buy used LEGO, there's a whole ordeal of washing it. I have spent entire
days washing and laying out to dry, and then finally sorting or rarely
building the set.
Frank
|
|
Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: the evolution of lego sorting
|
| (...) [Lots of snipping. Frank and I generated some serious text in here.] Thanks for the detailed response Frank... it was very insightful for me to read it from your perspective. (...) To be completely honest, I don't remember quite what happened (...) (24 years ago, 9-Jan-01, to lugnet.storage)
| | | Re: the evolution of lego sorting
|
| (...) I found this didn't work as well for me; even using "brand name" bags, I found that I wasn't completely sealing bags-of-1x2-tiles and such. Also, the bags aren't holding up well now five years later. I think they'll be more useful as I add (...) (24 years ago, 11-Jan-01, to lugnet.storage)
|
Message is in Reply To:
| | the evolution of lego sorting
|
| Here's a description of an evolution of lego collection sorting. It might be yours, at least in parts. It's certainly been mine. I might turn this into an essay some day, but for now it will have to begin life as a series of unsupported claims. If (...) (24 years ago, 5-Jan-01, to lugnet.storage) !!
|
42 Messages in This Thread:
 
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
This Message and its Replies on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
