
The Lego Storage Guide - sohkamyung
http://brickarchitect.com/guide/
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codehusker
Adam Savage has a great solution for storing hardware like
bolts/nuts/bearings/etc., and I think it would work well for lego as well.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OPSbF6kM9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OPSbF6kM9k)

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mcphage
Oh man, that's nice. Thanks for sharing that :-) I've got most of my legos in
a far fallen distant cousin of those, namely Home Depot's HDX 15-compartment
organizer: [https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-15-Compartment-
Interlocking-...](https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-15-Compartment-Interlocking-
Small-Parts-Organizer-in-Black-2-Pack-320034/204515485)

Which are nowhere near as nice, but they're $5 each instead of $50, and I
don't have Adam Savage Bux.

I've got a number of them, and I'm looking for a way to make (or buy for not
much money) a shelf to hold them like those shelves of Adam's.

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sokoloff
I have standardized on the Harbor Freight parts storage containers. They're
often on sale for $6 or so. [https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable-
parts-storage-...](https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable-parts-
storage-case-93928.html)

I realized that the HF boxes fit quite nicely into surplus 19" racks, which
are pretty readily available second hand and so that's the direction I went as
it was very fast and easy.

I also bought a few for the kids' Lego, but I use most of them for electronic
components, mechanical components, screws, nuts, etc. I've inadvertently
knocked over closed bins a few times without spillage (similar to the demo in
Adam's Sortimo video).

I suspect this is a another case of more than 80% as good for less than 20% of
the cost.

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hackmiester
> I realized that the HF boxes fit quite nicely into surplus 19" racks

Is this the right product? The link says they're 16.5" wide.

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sokoloff
I think so (like 99+% sure).

I'm on my way home from re:Invent at the moment, but will put a tape measure
on it when I get home. The 19" dimension on server racks is not the inside
clearance, but includes the rack "ears" dimension, so 16.5" wide to fit inside
the clearance between 19" rails sounds like it's probably the right thing.
Shoot me an email (in my profile) if you need any pics or other confirmation.

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HankB99
When our kids were little, all of their Lego pieces went into a plastic bathub
that they could no longer take baths in. I can still hear the noise they made
pawing[1] through all the pieces looking for just the right one for the
present assembly. That made up for the occasional piece I stepped on in the
dark.

I hope to hear the same noise when our grandkids get their Lego collections
going. At present their strategy seems to be to spread the pieces out on the
floor. Step carefully!

[1] 'pawing' is not really the right word as it implies an animal movement. It
was really a careful noisy search.

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King-Aaron
We used to have a 65L plastic storage bucket, but lined it with an old bed
sheet, and then the lego poured on top.

This means that when the kids want to play, you can lift the entire collection
out of the bucket with the sheet, then lay the sheet on the floor.

When they're finished, you pick the sheet up by the corners, and place the
thing back into the box. We rarely had orphan parts flying around the house
because the sheet both gave the kids a defined "play" area, as well as a much
more convenient way to handle a large amount of bricks.

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arnarbi
My bricks were in a circular denim sheet, that pulled closed into a bag by
tightening a string that was threaded through eyelets along the perimeter. I
believe it was even Lego branded.

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technomalogical
My wife's aunt just gave us one of those this summer! I had never seen one
made of denim before, I didn't realize it was a marketed product.

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minus7
I'm puzzled as to why one would ever force smooth scrolling with JavaScript.
Browsers have that by default, and when people turn it off you can most
certainly be sure it's on purpose.

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pcunite
I wonder ... how much effort would it be to create a five foot wide spherical
ball attached to a motored stand that had three doors all actuated via small
servo motors which had tiny cameras attached such that when an on-board
Raspberry PI responded to a voice command of " _more yellow blocks please_ "
the ball would rotate until the desired pieces tumbled out of one of the
openings?

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c22
I will say from my experience building a 3 foot wide spherical ball with some
lights on it that it will take _more effort than you would expect_.

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wmeredith
I love HN: oddly-specific feedback to an oddly specific request :)

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jraedisch
Shameless plug: if then all your bricks are neatly tugged away, but you
suddenly do not know how to start building, just grab a random, virtual hand
of bricks out of some of your LEGO sets with the help of my pet project
[https://brickshuffle.com](https://brickshuffle.com) .

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leggomylibro
Huh, cool. I might give this a look.

I don't have many legos, but I do have a lot of surface-mount components and a
decent number of through-hole ones.

Right now I like AideTek's 'Box-All's for the SMD parts, and thread organizers
or card sleeves for the through-hole ones. But I don't have a great system and
could always use new ideas!

And it seems like Lego bricks share a lot with circuit parts; there are a fair
number of very common standardized packages/functions, but also a big long-
tail of specialized bits and bobs.

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dirktheman
And when you want to sort two metric tons of Lego HN hero jacquesm has the
perfect solution: [https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-
lego](https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego)

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hellofunk
I'm a big fan of using a good fishing tackle box for storing legos.

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sytelus
Are there any good sets with variety of connectors. For example circular,
angular, multijoints, cross joints and so on. Standard bricks are so extremely
limiting.

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Cthulhu_
Look into Lego Technic, it's lego but with a mostly different set of
connectors and mechanics.

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DCoder
Just keep in mind that Technic design is substantially different from regular
Lego design, and even the main "bricks" (liftarms) have slightly different
dimensions than System ones. Connecting Technic with System is an art in
itself - for example, the recent Porsche 911 [0] drew a lot of criticism for
its design, whereas the upcoming Mack Anthem [1] is much more appealing.

[0]: [https://shop.lego.com/en-
US/Porsche-911-GT3-RS-42056](https://shop.lego.com/en-
US/Porsche-911-GT3-RS-42056)

[1]: [https://brickset.com/sets/42078-1/Mack-
Anthem](https://brickset.com/sets/42078-1/Mack-Anthem)

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marcusarmstrong
I recently needed to pick up all my childhood legos from my parents’ home and
am now seeking a storage solution that... isn’t plastic. Anybody know of
anything?

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Theodores
Just use a suitcase. Keep it childhood, i.e. all in one big box and don't go
for adult sorted mode.

Fundamentally, as a child Lego builder all bricks should be in use at all
times as part of an existing construction.

Therefore if you are going to build a Saturn V rocket then you demolish the
black and white houses in the townscape to make the rocket. Existing models
are de-facto storage, if you also need a new car and there is no windscreen
then maybe another car becomes an open top sports car. There is no receptacle
labelled as 'windscreens' with the Lego part number.

In this mode all inventory is in memory, sure there is a lot of scrabbling
around but that's Lego.

The other benefit of the suitcase is that it is lined and therefore good for
scrabbling. Plus there are pockets for a few special pieces.

So collect an old suitcase as well as the Lego bricks whilst you are there. In
practice the suitcase works well for moving play from room to room, plus, once
closed, the suitcase can tuck under a bed or coffee table.

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virtualized
Unfortunately unreadable because the scrolling is broken.

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_jal
Seems like lego would be a great material to build lego storage with.

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Cthulhu_
Go full meta! Actually that's a good idea, I wonder if Lego could take that
and come up with a system of their own.

