What's the best way to wash Lego?

[Thistledew]

I have retrieved my own large stash of Lego from my parents' loft to give to DS to play with.

It's rather grubby from years of play and from being stored so I'd like to clean it up before he has it to play with. When I gave him my old Duplo I just bunged it in the dishwasher and it came up lovely and clean, but the small Lego pieces are too small to wash it in this way.

What's the best way of getting it clean? I was thinking of tying it securely in a pillowcase and putting it in the washing machine along with some towels. Is this a daft idea?

I wouldn’t trust a pillowcase. Every time I’ve put trainers or soft toys in a pillowcase they’ve always worked their way out, no matter how tight I knot it closed.

I'd do it in the bathtub with washing up liquid and a nail brush

Each to their own though, washing machine works too but as others have said it would be noisy

Whatever you do, don't do what dh did just over a week ago: tip the whole lot into the bath with a plughole cover thing and get down on your hands and knees and rinse it with the shower. He found approx. 1,453,378,864 pine needles (?!) as well as broken pieces and bits of other toys. It took him 5.5 hours and we're still finding pine needles in the bathroom!

I'm pleased to report that the washing machine brought the bricks up like new. I divided it amongst 5 pillowcases and 2 loads of laundry and just put it in with a normal wash (but with no delicate items of clothing). The only thing that suffered was that some of the faces on the Lego people have faded a bit, so maybe it would have been better to do them by hand.

What was funny was that even though I had diligently gone through and separated all the bricks, quite a few came out joined back together- and not just higgledy-piggledy but neatly stacked up!

Bleach it in the bath.