Organizing by type is usually the recommended practice. What those types are, and how deep/separated they go, depends entirely on what you have in your collection and what you want to do with them. If I had the setup in the picture above, I'd use the larger bins for 1x and 2x bricks and large plates, the medium bins in the middle could be for 1x and 2x plates, tiles, maybe slopes, doors/windows. Then the smaller bins up top could be for detail bits like SNOT bricks, 1x1 plates and tiles, minifigs and minifig accessories. Something like that.

The brick architect has a really nice storage and sorting guide on his website! You should check it out. Just look up the brick architect on google and you should find it!

Look into r/legostorage it's dedicated for that kind of thing

I am a fan of organizing by part type and not by color. It is up to you.

https://preview.redd.it/11feogryazce1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7b7b2c5f1331e566f646760782b3dd4db5a80c2

We use the Ikea bins and hot glue the representative pieces on the front. It's not perfect, but I my kids want a technics beam, or a wing piece, or a 1x plate, they know where to go.

The hard part is sorting.

My kids are 7YO and 5YO and they just arent in the mindset to follow sorting rules at cleanup. The bottom blue bins are "Decoration Bins" which are really just unsorted LEGO.

YMMV

I'm embarking on the same journey. I really like the categories and graphic that this post highlighted. Right now, I have consolidated categories 1-5, 7-9 and 11-12, but I anticipate I will need to break them out because I am running out space in my 1-5 bin. I like having the visual of what shapes belong to each category!

I'm sorting into Tupperware at the moment. We have an IKEA Trofast system with shallow drawers, so long term, the bigger piles will go in their own drawer and I plan to utilize Trofast drawer dividers for when I can combine categories into one drawer.

If you have a small collection you could just get like a like 12 bins (~shoe box sized) for sorting by color. Then just lump colors close to each other into one. Green, dark green, light green etc. 

But then once the collection get bigger just sort by part shape. The only reason I don't recommend it first is smaller collections seem dumb to sort by shape and sorting by shape is way more expensive since it's a long term solution/investment.

When I started sorting by shape I just went to a big box hardware store and bought a bunch of orgininizers. 

I started with sterilite drawers filled with sorted bags and tackle boxes. but I'm moving towards using more of these plus some of the larger version.

https://www.harborfreight.com/20-bin-medium-portable-parts-storage-case-93928.html

I feel like they're much easier to use than tackle boxes since I can take individual bins out and easier to sort than with bags in drawers.

An excellent resource.

https://brickarchitect.com/guide/

Akro-Mils cabinets

I’ve shared a Brand Store on Amazon with you. https://www.amazon.com/stores/Akro-Mils/page/B1F0E10E-6E3D-49EB-AC19-AB2D3D2B5E2A?lp_context_asin=B003TV3NL0&store_ref=bl_ast_dp_brandLogo_sto&ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_sf_stores_JW91SCF9GQYQ8CJVXAC9

I started by sorting into a few broad categories, like bricks, plates, tiles, weird tiles, and the like. Then you can easily see how big the individual categories are and take the biggest ones and divide them into a few subcategories. I kept doing that until I had all my containers in use.

And whatever you do, don't sort by colour. It's way more effort and makes it pretty hard to find things. I only sort by colour if I have so many of a specific piece that it makes sense to separate like that. Especially if there are a few common colours of which there are a million and a few rarer ones which become much harder to find in there.

Sort by type first, then subdivisions by size, (then color if you want/have space/bins/bags). Minimum large from small.

Small things sink.

It is easier to find a 1x1 red tile in a bin of 1x1 tile, than a red 1x1 tile in a bin of red things (no matter how finely divided).

?

Ymmv

Tom Alphin of Brickarchitect has a great website on this, as well as printable labels to help sort.

I personally use a container method: The majority of my collection is bricks, plates, clips (things that clip or can clip), angles, hinges, and vehicle parts. For bricks and plates, I have it split by size: 2x4, 2x2, 1x2, and then an overflow of larger parts where there isn't value to part sorting just type.

The boxes in the back of the Advent Calendars actually work well for sorting when pulled out - I'd recommend starting with these and Akro Mils units to sort smaller pieces

For sets, I love ziplock bags. I like to play around with alternate builds for 3in1 sets so each set is in its own bag. Same with my out of rotation display sets. 

For my bulk Lego, I sort by color but only the bricks, plates, slopes, tiles and such. Anything smaller than a 1x2 or a special piece like clips, cheese slope, minifigures, plants, hinges, all go into an akro mils type tool organizer. 

I find this compromise allows me to build quickly and creatively without constantly sorting. I can pull out a bunch of brown pieces, make my log cabin, pulling from the specialty pieces as needed, try things, switch up pieces, go back to the other pieces, and then when I’ve got it, I just dump all of my unused brown pieces back into the brown bin. 

I’m having a problem storing also. Does anyone have an idea of where I can get a craft room to store and build with my Lego sets. I’m not fussy maybe 20 x 20 with an attached bath and kitchenette and mahogany built ins. /s

I like the 10-drawer roller cart from The Container Store! Or ikea has some really inexpensive bins called the NOJIG! They come in different sizes and depths.

Ice cream containers I used. I have like 30 so I could cover colour and also most types

Idk about yall but I keep my transparent pieces in their own section

Join the club

Start with big categories and sort those into more specific groups until you're satisfied. I started with bricks, plates and other, and went from there. I got a few of these storage drawers in a few different sizes and it works well (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Sterilite-Clearview-14-625-in-x-10-625-in-3-Drawer-Organizer-Unit-20938003/100557600)

r/LegoStorage

https://brickarchitect.com/guide/

Here is a good article.

Alphabetical and by year acquired is my preferred method.

Never by color...think about staring into a bin of all black LEGO. You aren't going to see anything.

Start with a rough sort and go more specific as you need based on volume: bricks, plates, slopes, tiles, minifigs (including accessories), technic, and everything else.

It sounds like everything is neatly sorted and organized already. Are you trying to figure out if you have the correct pieces to make a certain design on Rebrickable? If so, then cataloguing them there as another commenter mentioned could be helpful.

Otherwise, start building and see what happens. The best systems are born out of use and necessity, and will change over time. Better to get to building and let the system take shape around that, then delay your building because you’re paralyzed over how many 1x2 green tiles you may or may not have :)

This is a lot of pieces. I’d skip the manual sorting and invest all your time and money into designing an AI powered Lego sorting machine to sort it for you.

Only halfway joking.

I have about 200,000 pieces. The storage and organization for this collection takes up an entire 10’x15’ bedroom of my house. It’s probably 80% sorted at any given time and I wish I had more space.

I originally sorted by type and color for a lot of my collection, but when I got IKEA Alex drawers I recombined some things, partially to make it easier to sort. So for pieces that I have in large quantity like plate and brick, I sort into 8 color families. Black, gray, white, browns and tans, blues, greens, yellows/oranges/reds, pinks/purples. This works pretty well for balancing how much time it takes to sort and how much time it takes to find.

I sort pieces that I have in smaller quantity into akro mils drawers. Often I split a drawer with a divider, and put two or more labels on it. I went in order placing labels per brick architects system- I felt no need to reinvent the wheel. In most cases I put labels on drawers even if I didn’t have the pieces yet, because I knew I would and resorting the drawers to add a piece in sequence was a pain.

When I’m actually sorting pieces I start by sorting by size with a sifter thing. Then I sort a given size by category- per brick architects labels. So all technic, plate, brick, vehicle, go into the same tray, that sort of thing. There are like 14 categories. Then I’ll do another sort of those pieces into the drawers they go into. Because I followed his labels when setting up my drawers these are all in the same spot so I can stand or sit and sort out all the technic, all the plate, all the brick, all the snot.

It gets complicated when you outgrow your drawers though. If I could do it all again I’d skip Akro-Mils and just get all IKEA Alex+nojig trays. They’re more flexible than Akro mils when your sorted pieces outgrow their drawer.

When I don’t want to move pieces and an AM drawer is full, I’ll shunt pieces by category into a big plastic pretzel container. I’ve been saving these for long time from the club store. That way pieces are still sorted by category at least and not dumped back in the “tote of shame” if I run out of space in a drawer.

It’s still a slog but I hope this helps somehow. There are pics of our Lego room in my history if you want to see our setup.

A suggestion would be to use something like rebrickable.com and create a digital version of your collection. Tedious to set up and catalogue everything, having just done my own, but once complete is fantastic for the "how many of these do I have again..." questions that always come up. At your size of collection I think it would be impossible to have a visual system ie: open a drawer and immediately see the quantity, unless you've got a ton of space for a ton of drawers.

Brickarchitect.com labels is the best starting point. Once you have groups and parts kinda figured out, you can work on what you have little of that can be paired together.

Though for the less common parts, its also going to be a game of when you see a part you need, where would you first THINK to look for it.

Not since I tried it once, it’s too easy to find them this way. I like to take my time and not rush through a build. I like the challenge of digging through the pieces to find what I need. I do however put the large pieces off to one side.

I probably should organize my bricks since it would make it a whole lot easier but I tend to throw the bricks into one clear plastic container 🤣

I'm more of a "dump them into a container and spend endless time rifling through the pieces, concluding that there must be a missing piece and then it's right there"-kind of guy myself.

I don't throw out the piece bags until after I've finished all the steps with that bag...because I've accidentally left pieces in the bags far too often. I'll be unable to find a piece, check the table, check the floor, think it might be a missing piece I'll need to replace, and then find it in the plastic bag.

This is me, but my girlfriend will take them and organize them while I build

I dump the bags on the table. Then while I am building my kids do free builds.

Then I have to “break” their creations - while also not knowing if the parts I am looking for are in there.

It’s a silly process.

That leads them to later breaking the final product because they needed a piece for their free builds.