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Subject: 
Re: the evolution of lego sorting
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.storage
Date: 
Tue, 9 Jan 2001 03:07:26 GMT
Viewed: 
8112 times
  
On Sun, 7 Jan 2001 04:41:39 GMT, Frank Filz <ffilz@mindspring.com> wrote:
Remy Evard wrote:

[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.

(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.

To be completely honest, I don't remember quite what happened for me
in the beginning either.  By the time I was 10 or so (20+ years ago),
I was sorting by part, if I sorted at all.  But I do remember sorting
by color for about a day or two and realizing it just wouldn't work for
me.  So the early bits in this evolution were written more based on
what I've seen people say they were doing here and a faint recollection
of my really early Lego days.

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).

I've got quite a few, in part because those particular pieces are
special.  For example, my yellow castle is either displayed or archived..
those pieces are never mixed in with the large pile.  Same with some of
my really really old sets, from the early 60s.  Those pieces are too
different from the rest to really mix in.o

The other reason I archive by set is that I just plain enjoy building
some of the sets as their own set.  For example, the Guarded Inn is this
way.  I build it, set it up, then eventually need the shelf space, but
can't bear to mix it in to the large pile because finding all the pieces
is such a pain I'll never rebuild it...  and it's too great to not
rebuild every once in a while.

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).

I don't like to do this because I find it pretty hard to find the one
ziplock I'm looking for in a huge pile of ziplocks.  (On the other hand,
due to space constraints, I may have to start doing that.  It's a very
space efficient way to store.)

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).

Yeah, my bricks and such overflowed long ago.  But that didn't seem
unusual.  It did seem strange to me that I had so many horses I actually
had a box on a shelf marked "horses".  It was easy to envision this
turning into an entire shelf with "dragons", "monkeys", "parrots",
"polar bears"...  overflow for animals makes a lot more sense.

You forgot another step: the one where your life revolves around buying
and sorting and you almost never build anything.

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head with that one.  I've got some
thoughts on that which I will perhaps write up the next time I've spent
too much of an evening sorting and can't sleep...

But that's definitely the big issue.  The people who amaze me are the
ones who have large lego collections, have time to build MOCs, and also
have time to keep up with the article flow here and even post regularly.
I'm guessing they don't have a 2-year old. :-)

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.

Net bags and a dishwasher.

  -r'm

Remy Evard / evard@mcs.anl.gov



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: the evolution of lego sorting
 
(...) As a child, I don't think we (me and my sisters) sorted the LEGO at all, or at least not into more than a few bins (I just remembered my dad built a box with drawers and dividers which might have been for the LEGO), but then we didn't have all (...) (23 years ago, 9-Jan-01, to lugnet.storage)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: the evolution of lego sorting
 
(...) 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 (...) (23 years ago, 7-Jan-01, to lugnet.storage)

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