Once my little guy got into Legos, his collection quickly escalated well beyond the small tabletop galvanized container I had originally purchased for him. Now, there are some people who put together an awesome Lego set and leave it that way the rest of their lives. Not my kiddo. As soon as he puts it together, he quickly mixes and matches pieces from all his different sets, making it nearly impossible to go back and find the exact pieces he needs should he ever want to recreate a particular item. I knew I had to come up with a better lego storage solution quickly to rein in the crazy and not spends hours looking for Lego pieces to find that one perfect piece that he needs!
Thank goodness for IKEA and their great Trofast furniture. I created an amazing Lego table with the Trofast system to house all of the Legos (check out the full post here), but I wanted even more organization within each of the bins themselves to make different types of pieces easier to find. So, I purchased the ANTONIUS clear plastic storage bins (also from IKEA) at $5 each to nest inside of the Trofast bins to provide additional compartments for organization. Now when little buddy is looking for a white Lego with certain characteristics, he can more quickly narrow down where it should be.
In general, we put smaller different shaped pieces in the front two sections, regular pieces in the middle left, flat regular pieces in the middle right and larger pieces in the very back section. Each color is set up the same way to make it much easier to find what we need. We even created a bin just for Lego figures and their various accessories, one for wheels and all things car related, and one for all of the super tiny pieces.
Now every little Lego piece has a place to call home. The only trick remaining is getting little buddy to put the pieces away after he uses them :)! With all of these great compartments you have a ton of options to figure out what system works best for you! Happy sorting!