How do you keep your bricks?

[humsup]

I've been keeping those spare bricks in a box. Meaning, all color all parts with all sizes all thrown into a biggie box. Then two days ago, while trying to build some customise ships, I find it hard to find the right color and the right piece easily.
Therefore, I took on the daunting task of seperating different colored bricks out and to keep them seperate in another plastic bag. Yesterday, I put my effort to test and poured out those bricks on a seperate location for diff colors. You know what? Looking for parts of particular color is not so tough anymore And I have fun time building the ship.

Is it a norm with you guys to seperate the bricks color for keeping? Or I have been slow in discovering the norm LOL!!!

Another query, do you keep the pieces of a complete set intact or you lumped all parts from various sets into a common bin?

Last query is, when I was small, I kept those LEGO bricks and like never touched them for months. The next time I played with them again, I discover some bricks actually fused to others thus deforming the piece. Does that happens to anyone of you before? Is it because of the plastic container I used?

Apologise for the many queries.... problem child I am And thanks for your input in advance.

[LTBasker]

I've got all my spare LEGOs in a big Rubber Maid box. One time I attempted to categorize them, but then I realized that another part of the fun was looking for the pieces - no matter how mean it got. I'd see the piece BEFORE I needed it but then when I needed it I realized it got buried while I was looking for another piece I needed. Haven't made a custom set in a while, running out of spare LEGO parts.

[JediTricks]

Color?!? I rarely have enough of any one color to worry about that issue.

I keep my smaller pieces in a Lego Technic mini-briefcase that I got with some set a while ack, and the larger ones in a Lego Znap mini-briefcase that totally sucks and I hate it. I used to keep extra pieces in knock-together customs, but I found that I kept falling in love with my work which made it too hard to tear them down when I finally need those parts.

I also like digging through the pieces to find the right size and/or color, that's part of the fun for me. I love that sound the pile makes when you're looking for that one lonely piece your imagination decides will fit just right. It's even worse for Technic because ALL the small pieces are gray and roughly the same shape.

I've never had any pieces warp together EVER, and that's around 22 years of Lego building experience. I've had pieces break from too much stress in the big box, mostly larger plates, but never stick together and warp.

[humsup]

Thanks for the input folks
Does melting and fusing of bricks to another ever happen to you? I reckon the plastic used in LEGO (PC I guess) does not co-exist well with a PVC type bucket.

[fourtwo]

i just toss it in a box. all my stuff from when i was a kid is either destroyed or beat so its seperate from everything else.
i have a surprising amount of useable pieces though from when i decided i wanted to start getting some lego again.