Storage solutions: juggleman
Posted by Huw,
Tomas, aka juggleman, shows how he stores his LEGO in a small space in his flat in Prague:
We have a very small flat (48m square), just 2 rooms and a kitchen. I live with my partner, who is very understanding and supportive regarding my LEGO passion. He also helps me with some of my builds and suggests what piece to put on which display.
I have almost all my furniture extra designed (not bought in IKEA or similar store). Almost every piece of our furniture was designed to accommodate some kind of LEGO.
I store my LEGO bricks in ERBA organisers. There are 3 types of ERBA organisers: ER-02443 (biggest; I possess 7x), ER-02442 (medium; I possess 2x) and ER-02441 (smallest; I possess 1x).
All the drawers have the same depth and accommodate exactly 16 studs long elements, which is neat. The smallest drawers’ width is 6 studs, which is also great.
I group elements by their design, very rarely by colour. I sometimes divide elements to grey scaled and coloured. And I have to organise bricks in each drawer in order to accommodate as many bricks as possible. This is very daunting and tiring.
As I have more bricks than I can accommodate in all the ERBA organisers, I must also put them in OBI’s plastic KIS boxes (Kis Box Transparent XXS 2 l + 5l). I don’t have any special room for LEGO in our small flat, so I have to store the boxes everywhere I can: even at the top of our kitchen link.
I assemble my builds either in our living room (on the Millennium Falcon table) or in bedroom, where I take advantage of our fold down double bed. Without it, I would be lost for all larger builds.
As I was getting more and more desperate in searching for my bricks through all my storages, I had to write a C# database for it. The inspiration, of course, came from Brickset. I added some more features like “identical”, “similar”, “inverted”, “complementary” or “left/right”. This is something I really miss in Brickset’s database.
I used the lock down to create this new GBC roller coaster and you can see my other creations on my website.
I started playing with LEGO when I was really young – when I was 8 years old. My dark age started when I was 16 and ended when I was 30. At that time my nephew was born and I thought I should buy him some LEGO. That’s how my passion started.
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22 comments on this article
As another Lego fan living in a tiny apartment, it's great to see someone post who doesn't have a 2,000 basement! Helps show us Lego is for everyone, even if we don't have room for a massive wonderful Lego city setup.
PS: your roller coaster setup is really cool too
Great collection!! Question: where did you buy that table you use for the Falcon? Love it....need it!!
@JimmyO said:
"Great collection!! Question: where did you buy that table you use for the Falcon? Love it....need it!! "
The table was produced by my carpenter (who made all furniture in our flat) in the Czech Republic in Prague. He can make it again for you, but you would probably have to pick it up here in Prague.
Finally a 2 room and a kitchen and not a national museum. Very nice labels!
Really cool article. Thanks for the insight.
Combining a coffee table with a display case is the most ingenious idea I've seen in the series so far. Brilliant!
I like the wheels on the coffee table so can move around, and a great way of keeping dust and little fingers off the model. I like the slight chaos of finding inventive places above kitchen cupboards etc. for stowage. Well done on the roller coaster, I note collecting all the different colored track whether you can as only ever available in small quantities, and prefer the merry-go-around for going around corners rather than using wheels in the wall (as on the official set), and the non-motorised wall 'hump' at the end to release the balls. Your website is amazing with lots or rollercoaster videos, including the full 360 loop with the new track http://www.juggle.cz/images/lego/LEGO_Roller_Coaster_Looped.mp4 which I have not seen before, plus lots of technic roller-coasters which looked challenging to build.
With every lego room I get more jealous.
My lego is kept all around the house.
The coffee table is brilliant. I expect a lot of AFOLs will want to copy it, if not for Millennium Falcons, then for other LEGO. I'm surprised something like that is not already available especially in the US.
@juggleman, I would certainly go for something like that but my wife insists that my LEGO be out of sight. You're lucky to have a partner who is so accommodating. :~)
those number labels on the boxes linked to your tool as a central index?
@masterX244 said:
"those number labels on the boxes linked to your tool as a central index?"
Hi,
the numbers on my storage boxes are used in my C database as visible here:
http://www.juggle.cz/images/lego/ls10.jpg
Do you see it?
Have a nice day and thank you for having interest in my work!
Oh - fantastic! And it looks like youve done what I was hoping to with the roller coaster, lol. I bought some pieces I was missing (especially the red steep track) and am cobbling together a multi -color version of the set rather than dropping the $350!
@Brick_Master said:
"As another Lego fan living in a tiny apartment, it's great to see someone post who doesn't have a 2,000 basement! Helps show us Lego is for everyone, even if we don't have room for a massive wonderful Lego city setup.
PS: your roller coaster setup is really cool too"
You might find this site helpful. I did, even though I have a dedicated Lego room. https://urbanbrickbuilder.com/ accumulation strategy FTW!
@juggleman very impressed with your C database! Is it available to the general public? What OS have you compiled for?
@darkstonegrey said:
" @juggleman very impressed with your C database! Is it available to the general public? What OS have you compiled for?"
There is a missing HASH SIGN after the C (as you probably guessed) - the web form took it away :) So I wrote it in Microsoft Visual Studio for Windows.
It is not publicly available as I code it to exactly match my storages and not general storage types (as you can see from my pictures here http://www.juggle.cz/LEGO.asp - scroll to the total bottom of the page - check this picture: http://www.juggle.cz/images/lego/ls10.jpg)
So I did not write it too general.
Of course, with some significant effort I could make it more general - but there is no need for that now :)
The best feature is to view the ERBA storage:
http://www.juggle.cz/images/lego/ls12.jpg
And I can place an item by clicking on its drawer or I can view all items in given drawer.
I am also updating the names of some elements so that I can much more easily search for them.
https://urbanbrickbuilder.com/
This is a great link! Thank you! I will probably stick to my ERBA organizers and KIS boxes, but if I ever move to a bigger flat, I will consider!
Great to see some smaller spaces featured!
@juggleman said:
" https://urbanbrickbuilder.com/
This is a great link! Thank you! I will probably stick to my ERBA organizers and KIS boxes, but if I ever move to a bigger flat, I will consider!"
Thank you! I'm the author of the urban brick builder site. Like @tallblocktoo said, so nice to see smaller storage getting attention.
Unfortunately, I also live in a two-room apartment with only 60m², but with my wife and two kids! Surely, everyone can imagine that there's not much room left for LEGO. In fact, I have almost no sets build up for presentation, but everything stored in a basement room of my mom's house. I sorted my sets by series, not by bricks, so I need less containers, but much bigger ones, especially for series like Star Wars and City.
Is your C Sharp storage manager open source? It looks very useful.
Edit: Huw, the comments mangle any lone hash characters.
Very nice, I think the ERBA containers share components (or at least match dimensions) with the US products by Akro-Mils. They are somewhat affordable and I have been slowly accumulating their drawer kits over the last three years.
@rj2uman said:
" @Brick_Master said:
"As another Lego fan living in a tiny apartment, it's great to see someone post who doesn't have a 2,000 basement! Helps show us Lego is for everyone, even if we don't have room for a massive wonderful Lego city setup.
PS: your roller coaster setup is really cool too"
You might find this site helpful. I did, even though I have a dedicated Lego room. https://urbanbrickbuilder.com/ accumulation strategy FTW!"
That is a great site! Thanks for sharing!