Having been building with Legos since about 1976, the most challenging task has been finding the best way to store and organize Lego bricks. I’ve tried all manner of the best Lego storage solutions including various plastic bins and drawers. None has really worked all that well or has been remotely affordable—until now.
The Lego Storage Challenge
Storing and organizing Legos presents its share of difficulties. Most people are lucky to locate a handful of plastic bins and separate the pieces by color.
That’s a good start, for sure. The best way to store Legos, however, includes a way to break these pieces down even further. in fact, a great Lego storage solution requires several key elements:
- You need to see the Lego bricks as much as possible
- The storage has to give you the right amount of compartments so you can separate each color into different sizes of Lego bricks
- It has to be affordable
My husband and I chose to tackle this problem together. We knew we had our work cut out for us. After all, our starting point equated to two large bins of completely jumbled-up Lego bricks. Once we dumped them out onto the carpet, we had something that looked a little like this:
The Process of Separating Legos for Storage in Containers
As with all good projects, you really have to decide where to start. For us, that involved separating the Legos by color into large piles. At the same time, we also identified and separated out Lego Technic pieces, Lego mini-figures, and pieces that were clear or translucent.
Once everything was more or less separated by color into not-quite-as-large bins, we moved into the final stage. Further dividing the pieces into smaller groups we utilized several key pieces from the HART Tools STACK System. We feel this is the very best Lego storage organization system you will find for the money.
Storing Legos with the HART Tools STACK System
Several aspects of the HART Tools STACK system make it the perfect system for storing Legos and Lego bricks. We like the variety of bin sizes and configurations as well as the fact that the outer boxes stack atop one another and lock together. This lets you efficiently combine all of your Lego storage into one portable system. HART even has a wheeled STACK cart that lets you roll your Legos around should you feel the need to take them on the road!
HART STACK Tool Box with Removable Organizer Bins
Our primary organizer included the STACK Tool Box with Removable Organizer Bins. It costs just under $22 and gives you 10 removable bins. You get 8 small square bins and two larger 2-space rectangular bins (suitable for longer and larger Lego flats and similar pieces). The lid is clear so you can easily see which Legos you’re grabbing when you pull it off the stack.
We used around 8 of these to handle a large majority of our colored Lego bricks.
We also liked how we could customize the layout of each Tool Box. Some, we left with the large bins in the middle. With others, we placed the bins next to one another. These removable bins make these the best way to store legos for easy retrieval during building. You can pull out several at once and place them in a convenient location while you create.
STACK System Two Drawer Unit
The HART Tools STACK System Two Drawer Unit gave us another way to organize pieces we didn’t feel would benefit as much from being removed from the containers themselves. This ended up being the best way to store Lego mini-figures in our opinion.
When storing Lego mini-figures, you don’t exactly need to pull out a small container and keep it with you. With the HART Tools STACK System Two Drawer Unit, we found we could separate our Lego mini-figures by color. We also separated a lot of the heads and organized those and also separated accessories—ballistic-style and handheld.
Like other HART STACK System products, the Two Drawer unit attaches to the other containers as needed. This makes it easily portable, and you can configure it as part of your portable “stack”.
HART 18″ Cantilever Tool Box
One thing we had a lot of was wheels and axles. Our collection abounded with various sized and colored configurations. The HART 18″ Cantilever Organizer provides the best way to store Lego pieces that you need to see and which don’t have too many of a single type. Wheels, tires, and axles fall squarely into this category.
With this small cantilevered toolbox, we loved that the lower compartment had enough room for larger wheels and tires while the top did a great job organizing our smaller versions and axles. This box also (miraculously) stays level even when fully loaded and opened. You’d almost expect it to tip backward, but it holds steady while we use it.
This is the only box we used that wasn’t part of the STACK system, so while it sits nicely atop our interlocking collection, it doesn’t secure in place like our other Lego storage solutions.
Half Organizer Unit with Clear Lid for Small Lego Piece Storage
I wanted a solution for storing and organizing all of our clear and translucent Lego pieces as well as smaller Technic adapters and hinges. We had a ton of them collected over the years from various kits and sets. The HART Tools Half Organizer Unit worked perfectly, letting us store everything from simple round flat singles to larger radar shields and even 2×2 blocks. This half-width and half-height organizer features a clear lid so you can see the pieces inside.
The Half Organizer also doesn’t feature individual removable containers. Instead, it relies on a customizable grid that you can configure for larger (or longer) compartments as needed.
Two of the HART Half Organizer Units will stack right on top of the Small Parts Organizer.
Is This Really the Best Way to Organize Legos? You Bet It Is.
We may be biased because we’re so vested, but we can now take out just the Legos we need, easily grab a series of bins based on color, size, and type, and get to work. Our next project is to see how closely we can recreate one of Lego’s existing Creator building sets using just leftover pieces! We’ll need to do some customization for sure, but it should be a lot easier now that we don’t have to hunt through a couple of large baskets of Legos to find what we need!
You may be wondering what our entire Lego sorting system costs. Well, it wasn’t cheap—but compared to what you’d pay for “dedicated” Lego storage, it’s a great value—and much more useful. We used the following HART Tools STACK products in our Lego storage rig:
- Tool Box w/2 Half Stack Low Profile Organizers – $39.88
- 7) HART Tool Box with Removable Organizer Bins – $153.79 ($21.97 ea)
- 2) Two Drawer Units – $87.88 ($43.94 ea)
- 18″ Cantilever Organizer – $18.48
For “extra credit” you can also pick up some larger cases without clear lids for things like large bases and genre-specific Legos. For example, we utilized the middle box of the 3-piece STACK Modular Storage System to hold our kids’ Minecraft Legos.
