What is an effective method for breaking down and storing large sets for future rebuilds?

Question

I would like to breakdown and store my Harry Potter Castle (71043) but not sure the best method doing so. I have young kids that would love to rebuild this some day so I want to make sure I break this down properly and store so that rebuilding later will be easy. Do I start at the back of the manuals and work forward storing zip lock bags of each manual section? Do I break down by part type? If I do that then we would be rifling through 30+ bags during a rebuild. Anyone have experience with this set and breaking down?

Answer 1

I don't have that particular set, but going through the instructions in reverse order and storing the parts in numbered bags will produce the most like-new rebuilding experience. You can even put everything back in the original box and store it that way.

The big weakness with this method is that you can't really use those parts for anything else. That's probably fine if you only have a few sets and don't intend to do any custom building, but I find myself very limited when storing by set. I personally store as much as I can by part (and then by part and color when I have a large number of a particular element). We have another good answer covering sorting techniques if that is useful.