Subject:
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Re: Lego Storage Thoughts
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.storage
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Date:
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Thu, 25 Jan 2001 21:13:04 GMT
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Viewed:
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2802 times
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In lugnet.storage, John D. Forinash writes:
>
> Last weekend, I got a chance to break out the Lego again and work on some
> stuff that I'd like to build.
>
> I couldn't find anything. I had about 25 gallons of unsorted Lego, and
> another 10 or so gallons of sorted-in-plastic-bags Lego from my last
> sort-fest, back in late 1996.
This is an almost constant condition for my collection (having gallons of
unsorted pieces).
>
> I'm still not completely done (even though there were two of us working on
> it and we didn't realize we wasted, oh, the entirety of Saturday), but
> I figured I'd share some of my thoughts and musings.
I've spent the last week's evenings and have just managed to sort most of my
littlest pieces from the gallons mentioned above.
>
> 1) The last time I did this was in 1996, and I had then on the order of
> 35,000 pieces. I haven't done an inventory, but I'm guessing I now have
> on the order of 75,000 pieces. Somewhere between those figures, I think,
> is the breaking point between multiple types of pieces can go in the
> same container and otherwise.
>
> On the other hand, it looks like at my point, subsorting by color is only
> useful for some sorts of pieces.
>
> 2) I'm warming to ziploc-ish bags, but not as something to work directly
> from. One of the things Eric Harshbarger's done struck me as a good idea,
> though in my case it's on a much, much smaller scale: _all_ of one's, say,
> yellow 2x4 bricks don't have to be in the same place. A working supply
> that's easy to get at can be stored separately from the rest of the bricks.
> I think that at the level of bricks I've got, bins full of sorted Ziplocs
> make excellent bulk storage to replenish the working supply from.
>
> 3) I'm still not sure what to do with plates.
>
> 4) I'm still not sure I _want_ to do anything with minifigs...
>
> 5) Okay, more on the minifig thing. I put all minifigs and minifig
> accessories in one 10 gallon rubbermaid tub. (it's not full, thankfully.)
> Sorting out accessories would be pretty easy, and would probably only require,
> oh, two more 60-drawer cabinets (yikes!), but sorting minifigs... Legs
> would've been easy-- but these days, those are printed, too. Smiley-face
> heads in one bin, "weird" in another? "weird" with beards? Ugh.
>
> 6) I'm running out of places to put storage cabinets.
Yep! Been there. Still there. Will probably ALWAYS be there!
>
> 7) I wound up with two types of cabinets; Plano and Akro-Mils. The Plano have
> a better drawer set-up, with two fingers to hold the drawer in always (on the
> edges of the Akro-Mils, there's ony one.) However, the Akro-Mils recess into
> each other to make stacking more stable.
>
> 8) Sorting plates by color is somewhat interesting. I used a 6x10 drawer unit
> for 1xn plates. I had ten colors of 1x2. I had 5 colors of 1x10. (I used it
> for 1x2, 1x3, 1x4, 1x6, 1x8, and 1x10.) I didn't sort out the 1x1s.
I have a few more pieces than you (@10x ;-)) and I have found that sorting
plates HAS to be by size only, not by color too. When I do sort by color and
size (bricks only), I sort by the following: Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, White
and Other (primarily grey and green, but pink, clear, tan, etc. all go
there). This is because I have so few (relatively) 'Other' color pieces. It
isn't very difficult to combine them all and just look for the colored
pieces at need. I do the same for all other pieces - by size (or shape)
only. There are times when I've had to spend a few extra minutes digging
through a container to find all of the piece I want in blue, for example,
but when I need only a few, I can almost always 'spot and grab' them. The
difficulty for me is caused by having about 600 containers to remember where
the piece type is. I also organize my containers by general piece category,
Brick, Plate, Tech beam, Wheels, etc. Then they are arranged in a
progressive order smallest to largest (1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 1x4, etc.). This lets
me zero in on any piece in my collection within a very short period of time.
> On first glance, 10 x 6 looks like a good idea, with 10 colors of 1x2.
> Trouble is, the intersection of all sets of colors I have has cardinality
> 12. And I haven't shredded the Life On Mars sets, so I supect it's actually
> larger. Similarly, adding in the 1x1s would have made that even larger, as
> I have many translucent 1x1s of random colors, but only have translucent
> 1x2s in anti-freeze. I count off the top of my head 24 colors I have Lego
> in (ooh, 25: chrome) and don't have a given part in at least half of
> those colors.
I have confirmed about 60 colors of LEGO, although most pieces are covered
by the first 20, and there are some colors represented by only one or two
elements.
> I gave some thought to combining the lesser common colors together, but a)
> Half the reason for sorting is so I can find the lesser common colors, and
> b) I suspect some of these colors won't be so lesser-ly common in a couple
> years.
Agreed, LEGO is producing more of the grey and green pieces, but since they
are also producing many more colors in total, I expect that my grey = other
scheme will work for a long time to come. All the other (non-primary) colors
show up very well against a field of grey.
> So, I suspect that while 6x10 looks really kind of cool with a row of black
> and a row of grey and a row of blue and a row of red..., it'll wind up being
> a little unwieldy.
Yes.
>
> 9) My girlfriend commented many times that I have "too many Legos". She's
> wrong; I have too many of the _wrong_ Lego. "Wrong Lego?! Blasphemy!" you
> say? Not really. When all is said and done, there are a number of sorts
> of pieces I have that I have more than I ever seem to use of them. And
> then, other stuff I don't have enough of. But I can't convince myself to get
> rid of some of the parts I have "too many" of, because while I know what
> I have is too many, I don't know what's "enough".
The only definition of 'enough' or 'too much' has to come from the user
(you). LEGO is being approached more and more as a 'medium'. Like paint or
any other artists' materials. If you were painting a picture, I'm sure you'd
be upset if you had a gallon of white paint but no green. Having the
'useless' colors are the price you 'pay' to have the 'useful' ones at hand.
> And, after all, every time I say, "What the heck am I going to use yellow 2xNs
> for?!", I go and do something like
>
> http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=28244
Sometimes you just need the right inspiration - then the (formerly) usless
becomes (presently) needed. Keep up the good work.
> So what do I know about what I need?
>
> 10) Organization is expensive.
>
> -JDF
Yep! Not only the cost of containers, the cost of the containers' container
(shelves?) and the container for all of that - your home. But, I don't want
to think about how much that adds to ;^)
Wayne
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 | | Lego Storage Thoughts
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| Last weekend, I got a chance to break out the Lego again and work on some stuff that I'd like to build. I couldn't find anything. I had about 25 gallons of unsorted Lego, and another 10 or so gallons of sorted-in-plastic-bags Lego from my last (...) (23 years ago, 16-Jan-01, to lugnet.storage)
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