Sorting Series: A New Way To Sort Your Brick

I like sorting. It’s a soothing exercise (very unlike rewriting an article in Squarespace after not hitting save and hitting the backspace button). It’s calming, peaceful, and uses just the right amount of finger power while leaving brain power free to meditate on life’s joys and sorrows. It’s fortunate that I like sorting because I keep finding new collections to sort.

So before we get started, let me walk you through The History and Times of Sorting LEGO Bricks According to Geneva.

Then vs now

My first sorting article was a time capsule of the collection I grew up with. The collection was sorted piecemeal as it came along. I started with a color-based sorting method, then went part-sorting crazy (did I really need Tile, Modified 1x2 with Bar Handle taking up a whole container?). Overall, the sorting method was patchy. Are wedges slopes or plates? Who thought sorting SNOT bricks by color was a good idea?

Then I sorted my younger brother’s collection. He moved it into the family room where it was an eyesore. So I sorted it. He promised to give me back all the pieces he borrowed from me. He gave me back most of them. What can I say? Baby brothers get away with things, even after they get taller than you are. Sorting his collection almost from scratch let me put to good use what I’ve learned through ten years of MOCing. Experience taught me to sort things like windows into a pile regardless of color and keep random greebly bits with their respective colors.

So with that under my belt, I was eager to sort my new collection to perfection. (Quick explanation for why I have a new collection: I moved. But I still go back home for months at a time, so I split the LEGO between places.) After a year of collecting bricks and sorting, sorting, sorting, I’m ready to give you another tour. (Also, I am [not so] secretly hoping that me knocking out a second sorting article will inspire other BrickNerd contributors to stop saying that they plan to do one someday and actually do it.)

Let’s get going!

Welcome to my desk, complete with duct-taped laptop and MOC prints signed by Markus Rollbühler himself

Sort of Sorting By Color

Few things are more beautiful than a row of LEGO bricks sorted by color. It may not be the most practical way to sort, but it will always hold a special place in my heart and collection.

Bricks

Fortunately, some parts work well sorted by color. Basic bricks, for example, are usually more convenient to use by color than by size, so that’s how I sort them. I take the basic colors—blue, green, red (and yellow and pink), white, brown, tan—and put whatever shade I have most of in the bottom of the bin. The other shades get zipped up into plastic bags and tossed on top.

Ah, colors—my favorite way to sort

On the right are two drawers of plant parts (again, shades with large quantities at the bottom, the other shades in bags), gold (silver/gunmetal in bags), and then a row with Technic (wheels in a bag), arches (windows in a bag), and random large Bionicle/constraction parts (Duplo bricks in bag).

These (cheap Walmart) drawers (which I am very proud of) represent the latest addition to my sorting method, so they are untried for MOC building so far. But I have high hopes. On the plus side, with a bit of particle board on top, they make a great table.

Moving on to the shelves above these drawers…

Tiles

Tiles rest peacefully on this shelf above my row of drawers. Or not so peacefully. I once triggered an avalanche by leaning on that shelf. Naturally, it happened on a day when I was particularly busy and was going out of town soon. I have since fixed the shelf more firmly to the wall.

two rows, darker shades in the back

As an aside, aren’t tiles just wonderful? This is almost twice my “old collection” collection of tiles, I don’t know how I got along back then.

Transparent Bricks

Transparent bricks look as beautiful sorted by color as their less sparkly siblings—or maybe even more beautiful. These are all my transparent parts, minifigure accessories included.

Please notice the tips of bricknerd stickers

Round Bricks

The next shelf is home to my round brickks and my profile bricks (now why do I call them profile bricks? Well, it’s better than what my brothers call them… they call them brick bricks). These are not really-truly sorted by color, but I do have enough browns and black round bricks (and enough light grey profile bricks) to pretend like they are.

Round bricks are specifically one of those problem areas where it’s hard to know whether to sort by color or not. Sometimes you just want a round brick, but more often than not, you want a specific color of round brick. But then, I frequently want ALL of a specific color, and it tends to be easier to pick, say, all the blues from a pile with multiple colors than all the round bricks from a pile of random blue bricks. And I certainly do not have enough round bricks in most colors to justify giving them their own spot in the system.

Slopes and Wedges

After much debate, I concluded that wedge plates should really go with the slopes. After all, I tend to use them as rockwork… or, at least, I use them with plates as the base for rockwork… oh well.

I just noticed an inconsistency… purple slopes are with the yellows, but purple bricks are with the blues… shh, don’t tell anyone!

Slopes are a weak spot in my collection right now, but any more and I’ll have to find somewhere else to store them, so I’m happy for now.

Plates

Next to basic bricks, plates are the backbone of every LEGO build. I have enough to fill more than a couple drawers. There are three rows deep of jars in that top drawer.

Plates

so many plates

beautiful plates

My plate sorting system is not ideal, as each of these containers is a pain to rummage around in (even those flat ones—they’re nearly overflowing) and I generally have to pour them out every time I want a plate. Plates in general are awkward to scrape through. Did I mention perfection earlier?

Sorting By Part

Much as I love sorting by color, some parts are way easier to find when sorted by element type instead. Clips, SNOT, small pieces that would get lost at the bottom of the bin—enter the drawers.

I’ve been pleasantly impressed with how much these drawers can hold—as much as a whole peanut butter cup, almost as much as a PAB cup—and they’re much more stackable. Kinda pricey, though. I mean, consider how many bricks (or how much peanut butter) I could have bought instead…

These drawers are basically all about the small parts.

Next set of drawers, under that:

Hoses and nets.

Rail plates.

Panel bricks.

Ingots.

Grill tiles and slopes.

Rounded plates.

Three drawers of 1x1 plates, sorted by color.

Starting with the top left nine drawers:

Decorative bits. Microfigures, Thor’s hammer, things like that.

Horns.

Bones.

Three drawers of jumpers, divided by size.

Balls and round bar tiles.

1x1 round plates.

1x1 round plates with hole.

Under that set (bottom left) come the rest of the 1x1 plates and then six drawers of 1x2 plates. 1x1 and 1x2 plates are sorted the same way, by color groups. The next stack of drawers starts with clips, divided by type. Mixel joints, hinge plates, and hinge bricks also find a home here.

Underneath them come the SNOT bricks (also one drawer for flags and another for 2x2 round plates). SNOT bricks proper are on top with brackets underneath. For some reason which I have never explained to myself, I have almost always sorted brackets by type, but I used to sort SNOT bricks by color. And while yes, I do often (though not always) want a specific color, I generally want a specific brick, too. It’s so much easier to pull a specific brick out of a mix of colors than out of a mix of bricks, that I’m amazed it took a whole new collection for me to start sorting SNOT bricks this way!

In front of those stacks of drawers are two small containers for bars and bar-clip connections. Of all my parts, these are so small and need so much subdividing, that these tiny beading containers work well.

Sorting By… Still Sorting

There are always a few random parts that like to hang out by themselves until I find out what to do with them, like wands and chopsticks. Sticker sheets also have their own baggie, while stickered and printed parts are housed in these inconvenient little individual containers in a rack. (Printed/stickered parts are a constant struggle—I find myself frequently going through all of them just to see if I find any that seem appropriate for a new MOC.)

I also have to mention my animal collection which right now is sorted by size in three different containers. There is also my collection of boats, barrels and bikes, as well as a red LEGO brick full of tablescraps, minifigures, and brick separators.

Really need to do something about this mess

And then, of course, there is “that cabinet” of half-finished MOCs, half-cannibalized sets, and half-rebuilt stuff from Brickworld.

Honestly, it could be worse. Honestly, it was worse a very short time ago.

That’s The Tour

So there you have it, that’s the tour! What’s that? We’re missing something, you say? What’s with all my minifigures, you say? Well, it turns out, I had already cracked the code for perfect minifigure sorting last time, so (almost) nothing has changed there. Seriously, I just brought the whole stack of containers from Chile and I’ll probably take them back with me, making them (and my animals) a traveling constant between collections. Nothing new to see there.

So that’s officially the tour. But you know what I say—a sorted LEGO collection is always being resorted. We’ll see if I can go another two years before showing it off again.

How do you sort your bricks? Have I replaced my peanut butter addiction with a PAB addiction? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Charlie Stephens, Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Lukas Kurth from StoneWars, Wayne Tyler, LeAnna Taylor, Monica Innis, Dan Church, and Roxanne Baxter to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.