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I have had many brands and sizes of containers for LEGO over the last two decades. However, one brand and one product is the indisputable king of my LEGO room. The containers that meet my needs best are… IRIS Plastic Storage Drawer, Rolling Cart with Organizer Top. (The name just flows off the tongue, right?)
These drawers come in multiple different sizes that are all compatible. I like the short drawers best because they are easier to search for pieces in, but about 15% of my drawers are the deep ones which are great for categories of parts that are large and take up space, or you have a huge number of, or you use very infrequently.
Besides coming in multiple sizes, these containers have many other great features:
These drawers are also big enough that you can subdivide the pieces within them further using plastic bags and/or plastic containers. In the picture to the right, I’m using a takeout food container to store small pieces, so that I can find them more quickly, and a Ziploc bag for pieces that I use infrequently but have a lot of.
I used to hate the idea of bags in drawers, but I’ve warmed up to it. They allow you to fit more parts in a drawer without sacrificing your ability to find parts quickly. However this works best when you know exactly what you’re looking for (you won’t be able to browse) and when you don’t need many of the piece (opening and closing bags is annoying). One drawer that I have entirely sub-bagged is specialty hinges.
At the time of writing this guide (May 2023), a great price for a 6-drawer Iris unit is $40 (with free shipping!). A nine or ten-drawer unit can sometimes be found at a price that is cheaper per drawer, and these drawers are modularly compatible.
Amazon is often the cheapest choice for these, but you may also find them online (or less likely in-store) at Target, Home Depot, Office Depot, Walmart, and more. They are sometimes rebranded but still compatible; for example, I have found them being sold by Office Depot under their own brand name. I have never seen a competitive price on the IRIS website, and I do not recommend buying them in-person, as their large size encourages retailers to stock very few of them (usually only a few at a time), and usually for much higher prices than online ($60+).
I have not been able to price-match in-store with online prices either, but you might have better luck. Non-Amazon sites may also only offer black frames with frosted drawers, so if you care about drawer transparency, pay attention to that as well. Of course, you don’t need transparent drawers if you plan to label them. (Check out Brick Architect’s labels for more on that.)
When buying at Amazon, you can use the site camelcamelcamel.com to view the price history and set email price alerts for when the price drops. They also make a browser extension that makes checking prices easier. Remember that there will be multiple listings on Amazon, even for the same product; make sure to scroll past the first result to see if there’s a cheaper one, and set multiple alerts if you’re using camelcamelcamel. At the time of writing, there are three results just for the six-drawer unit. Also be sure to select the correct color: the frame comes in black or white, and the drawers come in transparent and frosted. Frosted is often cheaper, but you won’t be able to see through them.
Random tip: avoid taking the tops off to stack the drawers higher than six or buying drawer units higher than six! You can still place one entire drawer tower on top of the other, but by keeping each modularly connected unit six drawers tall, I was able to fit them upright in an SUV or hatchback without disassembly or needing to lay them sideways, spilling parts.
In my experience, IRIS drawers are far and away the best option for buying a primary storage container. But what about making your own? Fellow Charm City Lug member Kevin Darke has a unique and inspiring setup for his LEGO storage.
Kevin made his own storage racks out of wood and uses plastic storage bins (without the lids) as drawers. Wooden rails on the side support the lip of the containers and allow them to slide in and out. Shelves above the drawers allow you to store alternative containers, bulky parts such as baseplates, or all those sealed sets you haven’t built yet!
Kevin built this as one giant piece of furniture, but he advises that if he were to do it again he would build each column as its own unit to make it easier to assemble, rearrange, and move. I asked Kevin about the process and what the pros and cons of this system are.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Finally, if you want to explore the extreme diy route, consider this solution by a now-closed BrickLink store!
This person made custom laser-cut cardboard boxes-within-boxes to fit perfectly on their shelves. This has the unique advantage of cheap and infinite addition of more drawers, and different unit sizes of drawers fitting anywhere on the shelf. While the closed-box style of storage worked well for this high-end BrickLink store, I would of course recommend making open-top containers if you go down this route. This solution is similar to an organization system used by a 3D printer called GridFinity.
At the time of writing this guide (May 2023), you can expect to pay around $50 for the 64-drawer unit, and $40 for the smaller units (all with free shipping!). Again, I typically buy mine on Amazon, but you may choose to buy them from or find cheaper prices from the retailers mentioned in the previous section.
The aforementioned Akro-Mils brand is historically very popular among LEGO fans, and is a fine substitute if you are unable to buy the IRIS ones, if you find Akro-Mils for cheaper, or if you just want to match your existing ones. The quality is only slightly lower which mainly manifests in drawers that have extra plastic around the edges from the molding process which can be easily trimmed with a knife. Their lack of stability can be solved by screwing them to a wall with built-in hangers.
There are other copycat brands that make units that look very similar to Akro-Mils, and if you find these for cheaper they’re suitable. You can again expect lower quality. For example, on a unit that I own, the drawers have stoppers on them that create a big POP that shakes the whole unit if you want to take them out all the way. You may see other similar products at hardware stores, and I recommend against these because in my experience they are made on the absolute bottom dollar. Expect flimsy frames, drawers that fall out easily, and mis-molded plastic.
In an attempt to represent all opinions, I will give a quick dishonorable mention to the humble tackle box. It’s far cheaper than the two solutions above, it’s easy to find, and it can be stored flat on a shelf or under a table. However I am biased against it as I cannot stand trying to pry parts from the thin crevices, especially if those parts are flat or square like tiles.
The only time I was able to appreciate the use of tackle boxes in a friend’s collection was for storage of minifig accessories and animals; these parts have unique geometry that makes them easy to grip and don’t compact together, and which are not used often enough to be a frequent annoyance. However, those parts could be located while building just as easily in a larger category in a mid-size drawer. For the parts that builders use most commonly, taking them out of these compartments just sucks.
Now let’s rewind a bit. Remember, those mini drawers that we just talked about are best saved for last, for the smallest categories of smallest parts that you have few of, but want to find quickly. But what about those categories of parts that you don’t have enough to fill a large drawer with, or that you use so frequently that you want to be able to find them more quickly without digging? The answer is, of course, mid sized drawers!
I don’t have a lot to say for this category, you can really fill in this middle category with whatever you like. By this point I hope that I’ve communicated my goals and reasonings clearly enough that you can apply them to whatever product you think fits best for your space. My only guideline is to pick something that you think you can keep using for the foreseeable future, because we of course want our secondary storage to be uniform as well.
My go-to pick for this level of storage areSterilite 3 Drawer Organizers. At the time of writing this guide, you can expect to pay less than $10 per unit for these online, when you buy multiple, with free shipping.
They are very high quality and stack well. I find them to be an excellent size for mid-size categories. For example, metallics and transparent color pieces are worth protecting in their own drawer so that I don’t have to dig through and scratch. Medium drawers work for some other rare colors I have a handful of and want to keep separate. Some specialty tiles and hinges would get lost easily if I mixed them with larger tiles, and I use them often enough to warrant their own drawers. I like to keep round pieces of different size ranges separate (2x2, 3x3, 4x4) so that I can browse my options when I’m working at a particular scale. They also fit the contents of a large Pick-a-Brick cup exactly!
There are a lot of different products available in this range, and this is also the area where you have the most options to pick a product for its aesthetic appeal rather than its raw utility. One complaint I have is that there are few options in black, as my larger drawers are black. I encourage you to shop around!
Even after all we’ve talked about, there’s still going to be special cases. I think that 90% of a LEGO collection can be stored well in the containers suggested in the three categories above, but I want to make sure you’re prepared to tackle those extra cases.
If you have a large enough collection, you’ve probably accumulated a number of parts that don’t store well in shallow drawers. I’m talking about baseplates, minifigs, extra large parts, Duplo, extreme bulk, and of course, all of the gallons of Galidor parts that you’ve been carefully collecting. These are the parts that you’re probably not using all the time or only need to take out at the beginning or the end of a project. You might put these containers high up on a shelf, or under a desk, or in a closet. You COULD get larger drawers for all of these, but drawers are expensive, and you may not need quick and easy access to these parts.
You could just throw everything into a cardboard box, but of course I recommend getting plastic boxes. They are usually very cheap, sturdy, and you might already have a few lying around. I personally can’t get enough of these two categories of products:
Example:Rubbermaid 1 Gal Container
These containers benefit from being wider and often cheaper. I like to use these as project boxes; if I’m partway through a project and I want to take a break, I just dump the entire contents of my table into a bin like this so that I can pick up where I left off later. I like that they’re differentiated from my other plastic boxes, but I do have to admit they’re not as nice to look at. These ones I buy from the dollar store.
For Auxiliary storage, you can really get creative with it and go with whatever fits your space. If you want bigger containers than what I’ve suggested, Sterilite and other brands make multiple sizes that can be found online or in home improvement/home goods stores.
Do you have any preferences or tips for storing your LEGO? Comment below!
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