Sorted Friends

First-stage sort of all the parts from all 14 of the Friends sets. In January I did a review of each of the sets in 14 days called “Fortnight of Friends” and these are the parts after dissassembling all the sets.

Sorted Friends

This first pass uses a bunch of my sorting bins to divide the parts into the following major categories. Each one will require its own second-stage sort (and perhaps in some cases, a third) before the parts reach their final resting place. These categories are totally arbitrary and seat-of-the-pants, and though they do roughly correlate to how I store the parts, really anything that reduces entropy is helpful.

Left column:

  • Slopes, curved slopes, and anything that has a curved upper surface
  • Animals
  • Tiles
  • Cylindrical parts and anything that has a curved side
  • SNOT pieces and Technic parts
  • Modified plates
  • Wheels, fenders, and other car parts
  • Small parts (1×1 rounds, jumper plates, grille tiles, Henrik/cheese slopes, etc.)
  • Transparent parts
  • Bars, antennae, flags, and controls

Middle column:

  • Panels
  • Printed parts and modified bricks (grille bricks, log bricks, bricks with clips on them, etc.)
  • Fences
  • Minifig accessories, including the new flowers (which should probably go under foliage) and bugs (which should probably go under animals)
  • Foliage (plant parts and old style flowers)
  • Minifig and minidoll body parts

Right column:

  • Bricks
  • Large parts (tall bricks, windows, doors, large detail parts, etc.)
  • Plates

Now that I’ve finished the initial sort, I need to process these further.

I’m having trouble deciding how to integrate these into my collection. For bricks, plates, and tiles, I sort by color and then within the bin for each color I have Ziploc bags for each size, so I can put the new colors into their own little mini-categories, probably just one bag for each color… But for the other parts, I generally sort by type, and I’m worried the exotic rare colors will get lost among the ordinary ones… so should I mix them with the other colors and maybe never see them again? Or should I put all the purple pieces together regardless of shape?

This is a problem I’ve been facing for some time and I keep going back and forth on how to deal with it. Any new ideas out there?

4 thoughts on “Sorted Friends”

  1. Yes, I think of those as tackle boxes but I’m familiar with the type. I prefer the Stanley hardware organizers though:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005QWYF/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bilwarsbri-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00005QWYF
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G1CUK0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bilwarsbri-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001G1CUK0
    The problem is when does a color get “big” enough to be treated as a normal color? The new pastels are obvious but what about orange? Dark purple? Dark blue?

  2. That’s not a bad idea but I am not sure the tilting bins are very efficient – too much volume is lost in order to allow them to move the way they do.

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