How do you sort your Lego?

[Noloudnoises]

Thrilling subject, I know.

We've just got into Lego. At the moment we have inherited a large box of mismatched Lego from various sets.

A friend was telling me, they sort via colour, rather than set. This seems crazy but seems to work.

Do you sort via type, then how do you keep track of all the bits of said helicopter etc?

Sort by colour?

One big box?

Bonus points of useful storage ideas...

Sort ? put in boxes/baskets, leave out on the Lego table, shut the door and forget

If its a proper set it has its own box with lid. If it isn’t from a specific set its in one big box.

If its mine which my son is banned from touching it is either stored by set or type of brick.

Really Useful boxes with craft insets here. Stored roughly by set type (so all police together, all fire together etc).

Models (DS is a starwars collector) are stored separately.
The tons of "lego all sorts" bought second hand in 5 kg bags are sorted by kind and function (4er-s, hinges etc.)

We have a big box of mismatched Lego pieces and base plates for “creative” play. Sets are kept complete and played with as they are. I keep all instructions in a big box in case anything needs to be fixed.
We have a plastic box with small compartments for all the interesting pieces (minifigures, hats/hair, weapons, food etc) so these can be used either with the sets or with the crap the have built themselves.

If you have room, get a dedicated table, mat or corner (we use a bit of the loft) where it can be spread out and not hoovered up. My DD finds it impossible to tidy up Lego mid-build and we found this led to fewer arguments!

Throw it all in a big box or you will Lose Your Mind (I speak from experience)

Colour
Car parts
People and their accessories
Hinges and joints
Technics
Electronics
The big sets stay built together for the most part, I keep all instruction booklets together.
Freestyle Lego with random bits are the best way to play though!

Have you seen Lego and Ikea have teamed to make a storage system just for lego? About 5 years too late for us but looks amazing. Saw it on the Brickfanatics facebook page. Think it’s due in the UK fairly soon.

We sort it all by type but there's a massive lot of it - it was by colour initially. Small boxes for eg studs, 1x1s, that sort of thing. Mini figures in another box, vehicle parts in one, wheels in another, then all the bricks and tiles and slopes are sorted by their size, one box for each size. My son recently got another set for his birthday and was thrilled when a tiny bit bounced off and got lost that he was able to find a replacement in seconds!

I have a really useful 8 drawer unit
Blocks
Flats
Angles
People/ animsls/ plants/ accessories
Large random
Small random
Vehicles
Plates

And a big trunk for the majority.

It's not worth trying to sort everything, but over time the small stuff filters to the bottom of the trunk and 2/3s of it won't get used. So it is worth an occasional sort to fish out smaller pieces and it gets the DCs playing more imaginatively again.

I've attempted by colour, plus a separate box for figures and their accessories, as they get played with the most.

It's not lasted long tbh, but I'm going to have another go!

This is where I'm at... smaller fiddly bits in the drawers and bigger bits in the box