[galaktor]

I would spend significant money on a simple device that takes a bucket of arbitrarily mixed legos and sorts them by type, size and maybe colour. The main thing holding me back from reusing all the legos we have is the difficulty of finding the right pieces in the endless mess.

[thirteenfingers]

@jacquesm's efforts in this direction may interest you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14226889

[kwhitefoot]

I'm sure I've seen a Lego Mindstorms Lego sorter somewhere.

Try this Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=Lego+Mindstorms+Lego+sorter

[kowlo]

Out of interest - what is a significant amount of money to you?

[galaktor]

Over the years we've accumulated what I'd estimate to be more than a thousand dollars worth of lego bricks (based on the prices of the various sets). I'd readily pay the equivalent of two or three decent sets (or a typical game console) to unlock this latent replay value for myself and the kids.

[enriquto]

Considering that a 1000 brick set costs about 100 dollars, you have roughly 10.000 bricks. It's not too much, with some patience and with the aid of two kids you can sort them all in a rainy afternoon. The ideal is to sort them into a lot of small buckets, like the ones you would use to sort screws and stuff.

[galaktor]

We've tried this several times - the napkin math seems sound at first but unfortunately the amount of patience and discipline required vastly exceeds what we could achieve in one afternoon. After multiple lego sorting sessions I realised we had turned what is supposed to be a creative and fun toy into a laborious chore, to the point that the kids dreaded the thought of spending another hour mindlessly sorting bricks into bags.

[someotheridiot]

The sorting can be quite relaxing for some people (ie me). Kind of like a background task you can perform while watching a movie and calm your mind of things.

[enriquto]

Yes! If the OP poured me a glass of scotch I'd very happily sort his 10.000 brick collection between sips.

For a much larger collection (as the guy who got a bag of his own weight), some sort of automatic sorting would start to be envisageable.

[Fricken]

A couple years ago I came into possession of roughly my body weight's worth of bulk unsorted lego. The sort job took about 200 hours. I have never in my life put so much (unpaid) effort into something so mundane.

[Fricken]

A couple years ago I came into possession of roughly my body weight's worth of bulk unsorted lego. The sort job took about 300 hours. I have never in my life put so much (unpaid) effort into something so mundane.

[ehou]

Some people don’t exaggerate. They just remember things bigger

[ehejsbbejsk]

Just sorting them by size groups can be super helpful. For example, sort 1x1 items, technic pieces, and large items (more than 8 studs in length).