Washing used Lego

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possum
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Washing used Lego

Post by possum » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:44 am

I scored a nice deal on a lot of used Alpha Team sets on eBay recently. They seemed to have mostly shelf wear from being displayed, and there wasn't much more wear on the bricks than would come from being shipped and stored in a ziploc. Unfortunately they felt and smelled like someone else's house. Not an unpleasant smell, but the dust from the seller's house did leave my hands feeling dirtier than I liked...you know how other people's houses just smell and feel different than yours does. I did a little Googling to find the best way to wash them, and the results were so good I wanted to share.

Blogs, message boards, etc that I found said the dishwasher wasn't ideal because of the heat potentially warping the bricks. I twisted my back wrong recently & didn't think sitting over a bathtub doing a collandar-full at a time by hand would be comfortable. Lucky for me, my youngest step daughter was spending the night at a friend's house last night so I commandeered her Hannah Montana pillow case and decided on the washer method. I pulled all the printed and stickered pieces out (will do those by hand today) and dumped the rest in the pillow case and knotted the end tightly. The wife suggested I toss some other clothes in with the bricks so they didn't get tossed about too violently. Side note for the single folks: women who are 8 months pregnant will suggest all sorts of stuff to keep them from doing a load of laundry. ;)

So after doing my husbandly duty & filling the washer up (I used our regular detergent), I waited impatiently for the cycle to finish. I saw all kinds of comments about having to spread out the bricks on the floor with a fan blowing for several hours. I've got a one year old and the world's most curious cat so I knew that wasn't a good option. I put a large towel on the kitchen table & dumped the pillow case out. I did notice the pillow case seemed to have a little more water in it than from a normal wash. I used a bathroom towel as opposed to a beach towel (another suggestion I'd seen), and I'm fairly certain the larger pile of the body towel greatly helped with the excess water. I separated the larger unique pieces, plates, canopies, wheels, bionicle pieces,etc & gave them a quick dab on the towel. Once I had a pile of small pieces I spread them into a thinner layer, placed another towel on top, and went around the surface pushing down just to get any more excess water. At this point the pieces really were almost completely dry. I left them out to air dry for a couple of hours then bagged them up.

Not only is the film of dust gone, but the pieces are almost as shiny as new now. When I checked the ziploc I left them in overnight just now, they're not wet but there is a slight moisture in the bag. Next time I'll try leaving a paper towel or 2 in the bag with them to see if that helps. I plan to build them this weekend, but if I were going to put them straight into my storage drawers I'd dry them more thoroughly. Sorry for the long post, I'm just excited I got 3 retired sets for $40 shipped and was able to get them clean to my standards. I feel like a whole new world of more affordable buying opportunities has opened up...which is important with 2 step daughters, a one year old and an 8 month pregnant wife.
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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by lukeskywalker » Sat Aug 27, 2011 8:06 am

Thanks, This will be so helpful.

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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by legogod » Sat Aug 27, 2011 11:52 am

A nice woman at work recently gave me all of her son's Duplo for free. I got three giant buckets, a lap table, and a baseplate. She said they'd been in storage in a garage for a few years and they looked it. Something had gotten into the lap table and I had to throw that away. The bricks all had that dusty/sticky layer. It's dust but when you clean it, you just move it to another place, not really getting rid of it entirely.

I went the hand wash route and did all of the pieces with a toothbrush and dish soap. I let them dry on a tarp in the sunshine outside. Took me about ten hours but I chalked it up to "worth it" for scoring so many bricks for my children. Wish I had seen this first. I actually just finished last week...:P

Thank you.
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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by Mantisking » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:22 pm

I've washed baseplates by hand in the sink using regular dish soap.

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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by legohunter » Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:16 pm

Here are my steps cleaning up the used bricks.

1) rinsed them with warm water first.
2) washed and brushed (using new toothbrush) them with hand soap (dish detergent is too strong for my hands). This step was taking time. It was hard to do if pieces were small, and I ended up using my fingers to rub them. The drawback of this method was that I found I might use more hand soap than it was necessary.
3) left them in the warm soap water for 15 mintues.
4) rinsed them again with warm water for removing the soap/residual.
5) laid them flat on a tray. This took 1-2 days for completely drying.

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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by keland » Sun Aug 28, 2011 4:58 pm

Put them in a pillow case and put them in your washing machine.

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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by legitimatealex » Mon Aug 29, 2011 6:40 am

What settings exactly would I use with the washing machine? Also do I dump any detergent in there? Do you have a washer that opens from the side or the top?
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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by keland » Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:25 am

just use your regular detergent. Any washer should do. Just don't use hot water. Use gentle cycle if you want.

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Re: Washing used Lego

Post by legitimatealex » Mon Aug 29, 2011 8:30 am

Thanks mate : ) Got a box of LEGO from a garage sale and the pieces are just atrocious with the amount of dust.
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