When most people think of storing a bunch of LEGO bricks, they think of that plastic tub or maybe that cardboard box a lot of kids have. It’s chock-full of assorted parts from a number of different sets and gets dumped on the living room floor when friends or cousins come to visit. It offers ease of use, but it does not really allow any sorting of bricks into meaningful batches.

That box is probably suitable if you have a few thousand LEGO pieces or less. But if you have more than 5,000 or 6,000 elements, you might find that it is getting not only heavy but also crowded. Once you have more than 10,000 bricks, it’s time to do some sorting. Figure 12-1 shows that it only takes a few dozen pieces to make a pile that needs sorting.