Boxes for individual sets

Question

What are good boxes (in USA or importable) that would allow young (5 years) Lego builders to store single sets, keeping all the pieces for single build together, while keeping younger sisters (1 year) from exploring?

Answer 1

I've been parting out some of my old Technic sets for my son to play with, and I've found that tackle boxes work nicely for individual sets. It doesn't matter too much which brand you go with. Most of the major brands offer a variety of sizes. Here's a set I just parted out using a Plano 3700 series box:

I also like the parts bins with removable internal sections for storing sets. These are great while building as you can take the bins out and place them in convenient places.

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Stanley makes great bins like this, but I've found the cheaper knock-off bins work fine for LEGO at about half the price.

If you are looking for a free solution, I sometimes use pick-a-brick cups or plastic jars such as the ones peanut butter is sold in for storing smaller sets or groups of parts.

Answer 2

Props to jncraton's take on this. I have an alternative suggestion, that may work for smaller sets. While I don't have sisters to keep out, I do have a variety of small sets that I can't keep displayed. My method boils down to:

1. I put each of these in a plastic ziplock bag of the appropriate size. I can write the set# on it in with a permanent marker like a Sharpie.
2. Then these ziplocks are put into a smallish plastic storage bin which gets labeled. The bins I have are 16"x11"x7".
3. The label from the bin gets put into brickset.com so I have some hope of finding these things again.
4. Instructions don't work well with this method, but if you're ok keeping those in another place I find sheet protectors in binders to work. Of course, there are other suggestions on this site for this.

This is probably not adequate protection to prevent a concerted sister invasion. A locked closet might help, but this is getting far out of my expertise. :). Chris H, no relation, commented that these plastic bins are available predrilled so that they can be easily locked up.

Another advantage of this bin/label/brickset system is that it works for lots of small sets that are still in their boxes. So I've got uniformity in the bin size for how I'm storing small/medium sets whether they're assembled or not. My spare parts overflow is also going into the same bins in ziplocks.