Let The Cleaning Begin

 I am now well into getting a handle on the newly acquired LEGO parts hoard.

Just yesterday, I finished counting the parts.

Did I just say "counting the parts?!!"

Yep, I was curious as to how many pieces were in this lot, so I took a rough count.

This was done by quickly moving ten elements at a time from one plastic box to another and making a checkmark on a piece of paper for each 10 pieces moved. 

This goes faster than one would think, and I was able to whip through 1000 parts in a little around an hour's time.

The grand total:  roughly 15,000...

That's a lot of LEGO!

Now I am in the process of cleaning all of it, a ritual I use whenever I acquire previously owned LEGO from yard sales and such.

The first step is to load a large plastic kitchen sieve full of parts.

This is placed in a larger mixing tub filled with water, a little dish soap, and a cup of vinegar.

The batch is taken out to the garden hose in the back yard. They are soaked and swished around in the cleaning solution for several minutes.

To remove any caked-on dust or other substances, a tooth brush is kept at the ready. 

After the cleaning, the garden hose is used to thoroughly rinse all of the parts.

Finally, the batch of parts is taken to the basement and spread out on a beach towel to dry.

I try to seperate the parts as much as possible to allow water on all surfaces to evaporate.

I have found that 2xN bricks and slopes tend to retain water inside the recessed circular holes inside the bottoms , so I end up shaking that out right away.  It typically takes a day or two to allow the batch to completely dry, with the help of periodically re-arranging them on the towel if any are still sticking together from water capillary action.

After that, the clean and dry parts are ready to gather up, sort, and integrate into the collection!

To date, I am on the 5th batch of the cleaning phase from the newly acquired stash.

 Approximately eight to ten more to go.

Then, the sorting begins....

Cheers!