It is called a brick separator tool, and you are supposed to use it instead of your teeth. In fact, you should never put any LEGO pieces anywhere near your mouth. Only monsters chew on LEGO pieces.

Here is a link to LEGO's official page on how to use the LEGO Classic Brick Separator tool: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-classic-brick-separator

And here is a link to LEGO's official page on how to use the larger black version of the brick separator called the LEGO Art Brick Separator: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/lego-art-brick-separator

We sell both of these products in our store: Music City Bricks in Lebanon, TN.

It is important to turn off the dry setting on the dish washer so that any pieces that fall in the bottom do not get warped or melted by the heating element.

We prefer to only wash pieces that have at least one edge that is 16 studs or longer. An 8x16 plate is generally the smallest piece we will wash in a dish washer.

We load them like you would plates and bowls - in rows with proper spacing. We do not place mesh bags of LEGO pieces in the dishwasher because it is unlikely they will all get cleaned.

Interestingly, LEGO specifically discourages washing their products in a dish washer, but that is probably because they don't want to deal with people who don't read instruction and then complain loudly.

Here is their article on the matter: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/cleaning-your-lego-bricks

We have been washing LEGO pieces in the laundry machine for many years and wash at least 100 lbs a week this way. We selected a machine whose drain holes are smaller than a LEGO lightsaber or bar piece so it was less likely we would damage it if a mesh bag tore open. We also picked one with no beater bar so we could load the bags in and out more easily. 

It is important to not wash certain pieces in the washing machine.

We do not wash large pieces that have a longest length longer than 16 studs and do not wash 8x16 or larger plates in the laundry machine. These larger pieces tear up the mesh bags and get cleaner in the dish washer. We wrote an article on that as well.

We do not wash printed or stickered pieces in the laundry machine, at least not on purpose. We have plenty that sneak through and seem unharmed. We prefer not to risk it, though.

We do not wash larger transparent pieces or tiles in the laundry machine as they show scratches more readily. 

We do not wash minifigures in the laundry machine.

When we prepare pieces to be washed, we take every single piece apart so they can be properly washed and air dried. This includes tires off their wheels. We do not take assemblies apart that LEGO ships assembled.

We also pick out all the non-LEGO items like crayons, playdoh, paper, batteries, ink pens, candy bars, cell phones and other stuff that might make a mess of your LEGO or washing machine.

We load the pieces in large heavy duty mesh laundry bags with about (2) 5-gallon buckets full of pieces dumped in a bag that is big enough for them to spread out evenly on the rinse cycle. We then load the machine with 2-4 of these bags because we have a large machine. This is about 50 lbs of LEGO pieces in our machine.

Washer settings.

We use the hottest water settings. LEGO recommends less than 104°F / 40° in their article linked below - probably because they do not want you to sue them over getting burned. We do not interact with the water during any step, so we go as hot as the machine will provide from the water heater. 

We select the delicate setting and the deep fill setting. We also select the double rinse setting.

If the pieces are extra dirty, we might select the presoak or extra rinses or both.

For a cleaning agent we use concentrated white vinegar. We don't like the long list of chemicals in most soaps and detergents, and we do not want our LEGO pieces to smell like anything when it is cleaned.

Interestingly, LEGO specifically discourages washing their products in a dish washer, but that is probably because they don't want to deal with people who don't read instruction and then complain loudly.

Here is their article on the matter: https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/cleaning-your-lego-bricks

Instead, sort your LEGO by part family if you must sort it. Better yet, don't sort it at all unless you are an adult builder or a very serious teenage builder. Shallow tubs of mixed LEGO pieces drive the highest levels of creativity and require the least amount of work to maintain. Stop creating work for yourself as a parent trying to keep your kid's LEGO pieces sorted.

If you have a child or teen that wants to sort their LEGO pieces to support a more advanced building style, it is more effective to sort by part family. Just don't sort it by color.

For example, bricks of all sizes go in one container, plates in another, slopes, tile, and so on.

When we talk about bricks, we describe them by the number of studs or knobs on their short edge and then their long edge.

It is much easier to dig in a tub of bricks and find a red 2x4 brick than to dig in a tub of red LEGO pieces and find a red 2x4 brick.

If your collection is large enough to warrant the effort, you could then split your bricks into two tubs: one of 1x brick and one of 2x bricks.

If your collection is larger still, you may want a tub of just 1x1 bricks and a tub of just 1x2 bricks and so on.

In that tub, you may want to bag each color individually if it makes sense for you.

The whole point of LEGO pieces is to be able to build and rebuild with them producing an infinite number of possible outcomes. If you just want a unchanging built plastic model, there are far better plastic model kits designed for that purpose.

When a LEGO set is glued, nearly all of its value and potential is removed.

There are a couple very specific uses cases for gluing LEGO models. 

Larger sculptures that will be repeatedly shipped to exhibits or be placed where the public can interact with them usually must be glued out of necessity, though we (Music City Bricks) have had sculptures exhibited in reach of visitors for years with no glue required.

Another narrow use case for glue involves severely autistic children that love to play with build LEGO models but have a special one they want to stay together and do not have coping skills to deal with it when it falls apart.

Most LEGO pieces are made with ABS plastic and any solvent, glue, or cement that is designed to work with ABS plastic should work to glue a LEGO model. It is easy to make a real mess of things if you drip any on the model and most solvents and glues require research to see if they are safe around children. It would be good to do a lot of research before gluing your first LEGO model and hopefully your research talks you out of it.

If you are extra particular, you might want to clean your hands, the LEGO piece and the plastic razor blade with an isopropyl alcohol pad and then letting them all dry before placing the sticker.

Somewhere on most LEGO instruction manuals they provide a link to a survey to say how you liked the set.

Every time you build a set, submit the survey and let LEGO know if you thought it should have printed pieces instead of stickers.

A good rule of thumb might be that no set over $150 should have stickers.

Or, no technic sets should have printed pieces since those pieces are more likely to get reused and turned into other things.

Or no pieces with any dimension of 1 stud should get stickers.

Or no curved or beveled pieces should get stickers.

Another good piece of feedback might be to include a spare sticker sheet in every set.

It is nearly impossible to get a new LEGO set with a missing piece.

How is it that some people have several "missing" pieces in every set they buy, and other people have built hundreds of sets and never had one missing piece?

LEGO's quality control and precision is insane and is the industry standard for excellence that many other manufacturing companies point to, to show what is possible when you take excellence seriously.

Even LEGO doesn't want their fans to feel bad, so they will just apologize and replace the part for free. They do have systems in place to prevent abuse of their good customer service, though.

We will expand this article in the future to show how they prevent missing pieces, but we will give you a hint. They know the weight of every piece to the 2,000th of a gram and weigh the bags throughout manufacturing.

Actual errors

The only confirmed errors we have heard of involve a sticker sheet sliding out the seam of the box during shipment, a left-sided piece extra and a right-sided piece missing, an error involving a malformed piece like a short-shot piece that did not get all the intended plastic into the plastic injection mold. When these situations happen, the reason is usually obvious - like the identical weight and shaped extra piece.

More common scenarios

It is much more likely, like a million times more likely, that the pieces are being lost after opening the LEGO box. So how does that happen?

Building in chaotic environments, you know, like homes with children and pets is a great way to lose pieces. Think about how many times you have lost much larger items like car keys, phones and books. We don't blame the car manufacturer when we lose our keys in our home.

Here is a list of places we have heard of the "missing" LEGO pieces ultimately being found;

Rolled off the table and are lost forever. These are those witnessed events where you see it go over the edge and then vanish. It is not missing from the set if you saw it at the beginning.

Down the heat and air conditioning vent. Yeah, we wouldn't stick our hand down there either.

In the carpet. You know lots of stuff ends up there because you hear it when you vacuum. 

In the pleat or cuff of your pant leg or long sleeve shirt. Later found in the dryer lint if you are lucky.

In the cat, dog, bird, snake, hamster, or other pets. Plastic does not show up well on x-rays and vet bills can be expensive.

In the cat litter box... eww

Under the couch. So many things are hiding there.

In the couch. Grab all the loose change while you are in there.

Under the rug.

In the vacuum sweeper. You remember the racket it made.

In the blankets or under pillow. Seriously folks, you can't build on your rumpled up bed and then complain about missing pieces.

In the pages of the instruction manual from where it was slid out of the way and it "ate" pieces as it slid over them.

In the corners of the parts bags. How many times have we checked every corner and still found them in the corner later when we looked again?

In the smaller bags that were set aside, and we forgot to open them. This is usually the final diagnosis when people state they are missing 10-20 pieces from a new set.

In the single unnumbered bag that some sets have. These are normally the largest pieces.

In an unopened second bag with the same number. Some sets have multiple bags for step 1, multiple bags for step 2, etc. This is usually the final diagnosis when people state they are missing 30-100 pieces from a new set.

The visiting nephews or cousins or neighbors played with the set mid-build and misplaced or carried off pieces. Sometimes we don't find out until they confess years later.

Sibling rivalry reared its ugly head and pieces were hidden on purpose. Also applies to upset children with LEGO builder parents.

Sometimes kids even take parts and minifigures (from a set mid-build) to school and lose them.

Sometimes the wrong parts are used in an earlier step resulting in them being "missing" later at their correct step. This usually is combined with odd leftover pieces from the earlier step. Sometimes it is the wrong color part. Sometimes it is parts that can be combined to be the same shape as the missing part. For instance, a 1x8 plate is leftover and two 1x4 plates are missing because they got used earlier instead of the 1x8 plate. This is usually caused when builders only look at the picture of what changed in the model and not and the parts list that goes with the step.

Less common scenarios

The box has been tampered with before the builder received it. This is a more common situation when all the minifigures are missing. These are usually sets that were returns at large retailers or online retailers and that are being sold at discount stores or similar overstock outlet stores. This is more common than we would hope.

How to prevent "missing" aka lost pieces

Build in a controlled environment. Ideally, build at a table in a room that excludes pets and smaller children. Use a tray to pour out your pieces so they cannot roll off the table.

Sort the bags in order by number and confirm to yourself they are all there when you opened the box. If there are multiple bag 1 and multiple bag 2, etc., group them by number. Open all the bag-one bags at the same step. Do not open the next number bags until they are called for in the instructions. If you get to a step where it calls for the next bag and you have leftover parts that are longer than two studs, recheck the previous instruction steps carefully. You may have used the wrong part somewhere or skipped a step or page. Sometimes pages stick together.

A good practice at each step is to pick all the parts called out in the ingredients box before building that step. Do not proceed to the next step until you have used all the parts from your pile for that step.

Check the corners of each bag carefully. Do not throw away empty bags until the entire set is finished. Ideally, do not stop building part way through a set, except at steps where you are about to open the next set of bags.

If you do switch to other tasks mid-build, mark your place in the build manual with the sticker sheet or other bookmark. Secure the build area from pets and kids. Cover it up or secure the room.

Take personal responsibility for the environment you choose to build in and control it or accept lost pieces as a way of life for you personally. However, do not blame a company that has committed itself to a level of excellence that most people cannot imagine. You just look silly to the people that know what's up with "missing" pieces. Which is more likely, a missing piece from a bag that was weighed by a scale sensitive to 2/1000 of a gram or a lost piece in an environment with kids and pets running around?

Still think your set is missing pieces or bags?

Like we said earlier, LEGO will still take care of you either way.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/new-sets-with-missing-parts

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/missing-bags-in-new-sets

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/new-sets-with-damaged-parts

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/replacing-stickers

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help-topics/article/replace-missing-or-damaged-building-instructions

LEGO is the name of a company. More specifically, the company is called The LEGO Group. The company makes toys and parts. We call these LEGO kits and LEGO parts. You could even call them LEGO sets and LEGO bricks. 

If you have multiple items made by a company, you make it plural by adding a "s" to the end of the product name, not the company name. You have a LEGO set or LEGO sets, but not LEGOs set. It would not make sense to make the company name plural.

The LEGO company makes minifigures, bricks, parts, kits, t-shirts, storage containers, books, theme parks, backpacks, water bottles and more. It does not make sense to call all the products and services made by a company - by the company's name. We do not go to a Walmart store and fill a cart full of walmarts, so why would we say we filled our cart with legos? If the misuse sounds correct to you, it is only because you have heard it misused so many times. Would you buy two Sonys or two Sony TVs? 

Interestingly, this means you cannot actually step on LEGO during the night on your way to the bathroom. You can step on LEGO bricks if you don't make your kids pick up their toys before bed. If that happens, don't blame LEGO, blame your parenting skills.

So if you want to win at grammar, say LEGO parts, LEGO kits, LEGO bricks, LEGO minifigures, etc. Just don't say legos.

If you want to win at parenting, make your kids pick up their own toys after playing with them. Don't step on LEGO bricks in the night!

Before moving, blow off the dust. There is no need to move dust to your new place.

Take a moving box and securely tape the bottom. We like three strips of tape.

Lower an unscented plastic garbage bag into the box.

Lower the built LEGO model into the bag in the box.

Gently pull up the bag edges up like you would tie it shut.

Next, pour Styrofoam peanuts or other padding material between the bag and the box. Other padding materials can be crumpled up paper, or the towels and clothes you are moving.

Put a note in the top of the box stating what LEGO sets are in the bag in case you don't want to unpack them all right away.

Tape the box closed.

When you are done moving, open the box.

You can cut the corners of the box and fold them out flat or just lift the bag straight up and let the padding spill out.

This method protects the build and keeps the padding material from getting mixed up in the LEGO set. It also helps keep from losing LEGO pieces in the padding material or under the bottom box flaps. Any pieces that fall off will be in the bag with the set.