A while ago, I blogged about my latest attempt to sort through my Bionicle / technic elements. Well, this is the weekend before finals, but since I've been totally cramming for a while before that, I spent time relaxing and decided to start sorting through my system collection.

For the most part, I sorted my collection into three main categories; bricks, plates, and slopes. I also separated elements that were minifig related or technic, smaller special elements, and then pieces that generally didn't fit in a category. It's been about 5 days of on and off sorting, but I think I managed to sort through my entire selection (not counting pieces still in sets or MOCs). Now my main problem is that the piles I sorted are too big to fit into the smaller containers I have, so I either need to further sort them or buy larger containers. (I'll probably further sort them out during winter break)

I'll describe a bit about each category.

Bricks: In addition to all the regular brick types, I included all the modified bricks (with clips or hinges added to them) and round bricks, as well as technic bricks with pinholes in them. It is now a very big pile. And after two summers of buying bricks for mosaic-ing, I now have a healthy selection of 1x1 bricks to work with. I am tempted to further sort these by either type (regular or special) or by size... I haven't decided yet.

Plates: In addition to standard plate types, I included all various types of modified plates... and I have a lot of those. I never really realized how many plate elements I have; the pile size is about the same as my brick pile, but the quantity of elements is much higher. I'll likely sort the plates by size, so that I can group all the smaller elements together.

Slopes: This is the smallest of my main piles. Along with general slopes pieces, I have inverted slopes, wedge pieces (except for the plate ones, which are in the plates pile), arches, and cone pieces. A bulk of these pieces are while, because I took apart a section of my giant dojo that was mostly built out of white 2x8 slopes... so that's what's really standing out in my pile. I'll probably sort it further by type or size... again, I haven't really decided with this.

Minifig Related and Technic Elements: I already have an advanced sorting system for both technic / Bionicle parts and minifigure related elements (body parts, accessories, ext). During the sorting process, I didn't want to put those pieces into their correct bins yet (it would've further complicated the sort) so I grouped them all together with the intention of sorting them out later. It turns out I found a fair amount of technic axels and rods hidden in my main collection, but overall the pile's a lot smaller than the three main ones.

Special Small Elements: There are some pieces that I use a lot to decorate MOCs with, but are hard to find in a big pile of pieces. So as I sorted through my pieces, I put these elements aside in their own special pile. This includes pieces like the 1x1 round plate, 1x1 tiles, 1x1 round bricks, 1x1 cones, 2x2 round dishes, and 1x1x2/3 slope pieces. These pieces tend to come in a great variety of colors (and many are trans) and are essential to any MOC. So now it's nice that they're all together in one pile, so I don't have to search for them elsewhere.

Other: Okay, this turned out to be my largest pile yet, but really all these pieces ended up going straight back into my main tub, where I previously held all my bricks. The first to be put in this were partially built sets or MOCs; creations that were too large for me to want to tear them apart to get to their individual elements. But then I filled it in with all the elements that really don't fit into any of the above categories. This includes windshields, wheels, panels, plants pieces, hinge elements (that didn't qualify for either the brick or plate piles), large specialized pieces, and more. This one is just screaming for further sorting. But the important thing is that I got many of the essential elements sorted of of this pile. So yeah.

My next step is storage. Like I mentioned earlier, the three main piles are too large to fit into my smaller containers, and I sure don't want to mix them into the big main container again, so I need to figure out some system for storing them.

And enough of my ramblings about sorting stuffs. Next I need to start building!