Music City Bricks

Your membership subscription helps us fund making the place even cooler way faster than we would be able to with just natural business growth. We are designing a new Music City Bricks experience as we prepare to move from our 3,000 sqft facility to the new 12,000 sqft facility. This new facility size allows us to offer many cool products and services that might not be profitable on their own. Your membership ensures we can reliably pay the rent and utilities as long as we have 1,000 active memberships. This then allows us to carry a variety of products that do not sell fast enough to be profitable but are a lot of fun to get all in one place. The hobby store for LEGO fans will be bigger. The Parts Department will be bigger. The play zones will be expanded into a whole pay-to-play experience called The Play Museum. We will be building out museum exhibits around the outer wall of The Play Museum. We will be expanding the LEGO city in The Play Museum. Want to partner with us to make this community project succeed? Increased expenses This expansion will be a huge jump in expenses for us. The space will be 4X bigger, but the rent will be 5X higher. This is still half what the rent would be if we were in a grocery store plaza. The utilities will be more as well as other standard overhead like more furnishings and the costs of growing our team. Share the burden You can dramatically reduce our stress and anxiety and allow us to focus on making the place awesome. You can do this by ensuring the rent and utilities are paid each month with a monthly subscription membership. Please consider partnering with us with your membership and by "selling" them to your friends and family on our behalf. That also helps us make the place more awesome faster by requiring less spending on marketing. Buy from Music City Bricks first If you want your community to look like every interstate exit ramp in America, spend your money at fast food restaurants and mega-retailers. If you like having a community hobby store commit to buy all your LEGO from Music City Bricks first and don't even check other options unless we do not have it. Make it happen Will you partner with us by purchasing a membership subscription? Some of you participated in our earlier membership program when we first opened the store. Anyone that ever had one of our previous memberships over the last five years will be sent a coupon code to sign up for the new membership program at half-price. Are you ready to be a Friend of Music City Bricks? Get your membership subscription today: https://www.musiccitybricks.com/membership/

We have always said hobby stores are doomed in this age of mega corporations offering bottom dollar prices and next day shipping. The exception is when a hobby store can connect with its community in a way that they want it to exist more than they want to get an item $5-$10 cheaper online or at a retail giant. You must ask yourself how the giants are able to offer it so much cheaper than your local hobby store. One way is that they have more buying power, well you give that to them when you buy from them. Buy from your local hobby store first and their buying power will grow. Music City Bricks has lowered its price formulas significantly at least three times since opening due to the community increasing our buying power. We even lowered our price formulas again when nearly all other stores doubled their prices around 2021. Your support has allowed us to do that. Our next big push to lower our prices is going to be focused on the people that support us the most - our members. One of the many ways our community partners with us to keep our doors open and our focus on making Music City Bricks a fun place for LEGO fans to hang out is by paying for membership subscriptions. Our membership subscriptions have three primary purposes: Bring you in every month for a regular dose of LEGO fun. Keep us in business with regular predictable income - so we can exist for you to come in every month for a regular dose of fun. Encourage you to shop with us first to make your membership a good deal for you as well as for us. Your subscription is critical to our ongoing success! By subscribing, you are voting for this type of hobby store to be in your community and are helping ensure its success! Do you want your community to look like every interstate exit ramp in America, or do you want it to have cool shops with great product variety? You make it happen either way when you vote with your dollars. Are you ready to make it happen? Get your membership subscription today: https://www.musiccitybricks.com/membership/

This is an easy one for you to check yourself off their website. You can pull up a LEGO set on LEGO.com and check its price. We have three LEGOLAND resorts in the USA and they each have online shops where you can check price and even place orders: New York LEGOLAND Shop Florida LEGOLAND Shop California LEGOLAND Shop There are also a series of LEGOLAND Discovery Centers that have very small LEGO stores built into them like a giftshop. If you want to find an official LEGO store, LEGOLAND Resort, or LEGOLAND Discovery Center near you, check our map and zoom into the area where you live or where you will be traveling. https://www.musiccitybricks.com/map

As a general rule, Lego releases new LEGO sets, produces them for about two years, and then retires them. As a result, fans that missed out on previous sets must compete for the available quantity that is available on the market for sale from other hobbyists and resellers. Historically, many LEGO sets from licensed themes like Star Wars and Marvel double in value three years after retiring. Some people are able to use this to claim they reliably fund their own LEGO hobby by purchasing two of every LEGO set they get. They build one and sell the other after three years. At Music City Bricks, we do not recommend LEGO set investing to anyone. Here is our math: Let's say you want to do it full time as a small business with you as the only employee and you want to generate an income of $100,000 per year. Let's assume absolute perfection and efficiency in every aspect of your process and see if it can be profitable for you. At the end, remember that you are unlikely to achieve perfection on even a single point, much less all of them. Our timeline: Year one, purchase $100,000 of LEGO sets. Sell $0. Warehouse $100,000 of LEGO sets for 1 year. Year two, purchase $100,000 of LEGO sets. Sell $0. Warehouse $200,000 of LEGO sets for 1 year. Year three, purchase $100,000 of LEGO sets. Sell $0. Warehouse $300,000 of LEGO sets for 1 year. Year four, purchase $100,000 of LEGO sets. Sell $100,000 for $200,000. Warehouse $400,000 of LEGO sets for 1 year. Take home $100,000. Year five, purchase $100,000 of LEGO sets. Sell $100,000 for $200,000. Warehouse $400,000 of LEGO sets for 1 year. Take home $100,000. Year six, purchase $100,000 of LEGO sets. Sell $100,000 for $200,000. Warehouse $400,000 of LEGO sets for 1 year. Take home $100,000. So you need to pay a startup cost of $400,000 for LEGO sets so that you can work for $100,000 a year. Our assumptions: Every LEGO set you pick is perfect and doubles in value after three years. When you are ready to sell the three-year-old sets, you are able to sell all of them, and they all sell immediately. The platform you sell them on charges you no fees to list them, sell them, or process payments for you. All your sets sell with the buyer paying for all packaging materials, labor, and shipping costs on top of the sale price. None of your LEGO sets get ruined while in shipping to/from you or while in storage for years. You are able to securely warehouse $400,000 worth of LEGO sets in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment for free. You have not electric bill, gas bill, internet bill, trash/dumpster bill, or other labor costs. You have no costs for shelving, forklifts, fire suppression, or insurance related to $400,000 worth of LEGO sets or the warehouse. You have no labor costs associated with buying, receiving, storing, and fulfilling orders for hundreds of thousands of dollars of LEGO sets per year. You have no acquisition costs beyond purchase price for the LEGO sets. No labor to go get them. No shipping. No sales tax. No inventory/property tax. You have no costs to setup the business or operate it or keep up with the bookkeeping. You have $400,000 available to create a business so that you can have a job that pays you $100,000 per year - assuming a perfect business with no operating costs. The reality is that you would be lucky to make $10,000 a year and you would be working 60-100 hours a week. So, how do businesses make any money reselling LEGO sets? Sadley, many don't and they go out of business after spending down all their life savings or a business loan trying to keep it afloat before going bankrupt. Some can lower their upfront costs by purchasing LEGO sets on clearance, but it can be hard to source enough to run a business without spending a lot of time and money driving around hunting deals. Some can lower their costs by being selective about what they buy so it goes up in value sooner and they do not need to warehouse it as long. Some are lucky enough to inherit a building or the startup costs so they can start the process more aggressively with less risk. Even with everything perfect, it is a hard business model to make work. Most LEGO set resellers that survive are not doing it as set investing, but as authorized resellers where they buy the sets at wholesale from LEGO and sell them in less than 30 days. This is also a hard business model because the margins are so small for sellers that do not have the buying power of Walmart and Target. Think long and hard before fooling yourself into thinking you can make money at LEGO set investing.

Yes, custom LEGO instructions are available online. Many are free and some can be purchased. Purchased instructions should not be shared with others. That is theft and discourages artists from putting in the work to make more cool instructions. Note that this article is about custom instructions. we have a separate article about official LEGO instructions. Here are some reputable websites for acquiring custom LEGO instructions. We highly recommend anything from Sarah Dees for building fun basic creations from your LEGO bins at home. Here is her website: LEGO Archives - Frugal Fun For Boys and Girls Here are her books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sarah-Dees/author/B01M0XE8Z5 Rebrickable is a great all-round site for custom instructions, especially alternate builds using only pieces from official LEGO sets: Rebrickable | Rebrickable - Build with LEGO Brickmania has a great line of printed and digital instructions for building military models out of genuine LEGO pieces and Brickarms weapons. Music City Bricks, just outside of Nashville, TN, carries all the printed custom instructions Brickmania publishes as well as most of the products Brickarms produces. Digital Instructions - Brickmania Toys Bricklink Studio: Studio Gallery [BrickLink] For all you modular building fans: Ideas for more cars for your modular city: Build a Vintage car to cruise the streets of LEGO® Modular Buildings! | LEGO® Ideas Brick City Depot Brickbuilderspro Custom Instructions for Lego at Brickbuilderspro How To Build It Modular Building LEGO MOC instruction – How to build it Brickative Modular Buildings Alternatives for the Green Grocer: Other coloured Grocers - LEGO Town - Eurobricks Forums Free custom LEGO Train instructions: Model – Open L-Gauge

Yes, LEGO instructions are available free online straight from LEGO. There is no need to download them from third-party websites, especially ones offering to sell the digital instructions or require you to create an account to download them. This answer is for official LEGO instructions. We have a separate article about custom instructions. You can get the LEGO instructions free on LEGO.com by clicking help and then building instructions. Building instructions landing page They also provide a free app on the same page. It is called the LEGO Builder App and the instructions are free in it as well. It is available for Android and Apple.

LEGO build instruction manuals can be worth something based on their condition and theme. At a minimum, every LEGO instruction manual is at least worth using as paper or recycling into new paper products and crafts. For instance, adults and kids like to make things out of magazines an instruction manuals by cutting out pictures. These cutouts can be used to make buttons, refrigerator magnets, cabochons, and many other crafts. There are also marketplace sites like Bricklink that facilitate selling LEGO build instruction manuals to hobbyist and resellers that will then use the box to complete a set for their collection or to increase its value for resell. Here is a link to build instruction categories by theme: BrickLink Reference Catalog - Instructions LEGO build instruction manuals can be worth hundreds of dollars for sets that sell for thousands of dollars. If saving build instruction manuals for collecting purposes or resale, you must decide how you will store them. Will you store them in a black plastic bag with a moisture desiccant inside? Will you store them in a temperature and moisture-controlled environment? You may also be able to donate the LEGO build instruction manuals you are no longer using so they do not just go in a landfill. Some hobby stores that resell used LEGO sets will accept the build instruction manuals as donations and try to use them again. If you want to find a used LEGO store near you, check our map and look at Independent LEGO Resellers. https://www.musiccitybricks.com/map

LEGO boxes can be worth something based on their condition and theme. At a minimum, every LEGO box is at least worth using as cardboard or recycling into new paper products. For instance, cats and kids like to play with empty cardboard boxes. Cardboard boxes can be reused to store items, or even collapsed and used as padding between items when moving or shipping. There are also marketplace sites like Bricklink that facilitate selling LEGO boxes to hobbyist and resellers that will then use the box to complete a set for their collection or to increase its value for resell. Here is a link to box categories by theme: BrickLink Reference Catalog - Original Boxes LEGO boxes can be worth hundreds of dollars for sets that sell for thousands of dollars. If saving boxes for collecting purposes or resale, you must decide if you will store them collapsed or in box form. Will you store them in a black plastic bag with a moisture desiccant inside? Will you store them in a temperature and moisture-controlled environment? You may also be able to donate the LEGO boxes you are no longer using so they do not just go in a landfill. Some hobby stores that resell used LEGO sets will accept the boxes as donations and try to use them again. If you want to find a used LEGO store near you, check our map and look at Independent LEGO Resellers. https://www.musiccitybricks.com/map

Yes, LEGO movies are a form of stop motion. They can be made by posing a LEGO minifigure and taking a picture, then moving it slightly and taking another picture. These pictures can then be played in sequence to make a video. This whole process can also happen on a computer with an animation program.

We don't normally get asked if you say the word correctly as LEGO or legos because it gets used so commonly in both forms. At Music City Bricks, we won't beat you up for saying it wrong. However, if you want to learn how to say it correctly and why one way is correct, keep reading. 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!

There is a little secret in the LEGO fan community that most people do not talk about because they do not want new LEGO fans to feel bad. 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

We like using plastic razors and clean hands. 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.

Please don't ever use any form of glue on any LEGO pieces, not even glue that claims to dissolve in water. 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.

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.

Don't sort LEGO pieces by color. It is easy to sort it by color. It looks pretty sorted by color. It is difficult to actually make use of LEGO sorted by color. 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.

We do not guarantee your results or that you will not damage your LEGO pieces or your dish washer. Like any new skill you learn on the internet, check multiple sources and form your own intelligent opinions and then proceed with caution. 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

We do not guarantee your results or that you will not damage your LEGO pieces or your dish washer. Like any new skill you learn on the internet, check multiple sources and form your own intelligent opinions and then proceed with caution. 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

Have you wondered what to do with that extra piece you get in some sets? It is normally orange, but sometimes it comes in dark turquoise. 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.