How to build a LEGO town: Part Three – Pick-A-Brick hack

While planning your own LEGO town, you will need to buy individual bricks. Of course, you can buy individual bricks and pieces at the LEGO website. If you are lucky enough to live near a LEGO store, you can buy your bricks in a Pick-a-Brick cup. They come in large and small. It’s fun because you can look at the giant wall of LEGO bricks and pick only the ones you need.

LEGO® 1-stud Red Storage Brick (Affiliate Link)

Most people just dump in what they need, shake the cup around and hope to squish as many of the rectangular bricks in the cylindrical cup. This isn’t the most efficient method, but it is the quickest.

If you need a wide variety of bricks, this website suggests you use the tower method. It’s putting a tower of LEGO bricks in the middle while filling in the sides with smaller irregular bricks and pieces.

My husband uses the level method when he needs quite a few of the larger bricks. This technique requires some patience, but if you follow the steps, you will get a pretty good bang for your buck. It probably wouldn’t hurt to practice it at home first. I found some images on this website to help you if you’re in a store and reading this post otherwise, the video below might be helpful to you.

When you go to the LEGO store, it can be a test of your patience and focus. The one we go to is at the Mall of America, so it’s pretty much always busy. The trick is to go early when the store first opens, if you can during the week is even better, and you will have better conditions for concentration.

If you can’t go to the LEGO store (because you don’t live near one), remember you can always buy individual bricks and pieces at the LEGO website. And if you use the links on my blog to buy LEGOs of any kind, I get a small commission (at no extra cost to you) to help maintain this site. 

Looking for the rest of this series? See the list below!

Part One: Prep & Planning

Part Two: Sets