Thomas Edison once said, "To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

Imagination, check.

Pile of junk...:

Check.

Necessity is the mother of invention. After hurting my hands digging through a box of LEGO pieces, I cobbled together this. A scoop to dig through the LEGO Box (Or as we call it, the Abyss)

 Just a 6x12 plate, 2x6 plate, 4x4 plate and that weird piece on the left.

 Another danger of digging through a box of LEGO parts is this:

Getting pieces stuck on your hands.
I saw on Pinterest an idea for a LEGO storage cabinet with lots of tiny drawers. Now I'm dreaming of being able to just get the piece I need out of neatly sorted and labeled drawers rather than digging for hours through the "Abyss" while leaning on scattered LEGO pieces and getting them embedded in my knees. And I thought just stepping on them was bad. I can dream, right?
Another issue for LEGO Builders is pieces getting stuck together. After a long day building with LEGO pieces, my fingernails get chipped up from prying apart plates. After years of  playing with LEGO pieces, I have discovered the most wonderful invention known to man. The brick seperator.


You can buy it here: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Brick-Separator-630#summary-tabs
If the link doesn't work, copy and paste into the search box.
This simple tool works wonders. We had plates stuck in the bottom of a  LEGO police boat for years and this piece removed them in a split second.