Hi everyone, I hope this is the right place for this.
I joined the forum because as my son who is about to turn 4 has just gotten very into Lego. He really likes the Star Wars and Avengers stuff, and we've gotten some Juniors sets like the garbage truck, I love that one.
So my husband pulled out his old collection of Lego. He had kept almost all of his from when he was a kid, unfortunately he kept them in a cardboard box with no lid in his garage. So, I took on the task of cleaning and organizing them. I was really pleased with what I've found so far though.
He had several of the small classic space kits, and a couple classic spacemen. Most of them have the wrong color hands though, so I guess he lost and replaced the hands. There's also lots of Futuron and Blacktron stuff.
He also has a huge castle set, and a bunch of police stuff, and I've found a bunch of little "Shell" labelled pieces.
I'm still going through and organizing them into what sets I can identify, so we can build some of the classic space sets before turning it over to our son. I've started using this site and a few others to identify what pieces go in what set, and I've sorted them out into bagged sets.
So I thought some people might find it interesting, and I wanted to share my progress as I go. Thanks for reading!
Cleaning and sorting, this is a small scoop out of the original box.

Found some classic space stuff, sadly one piece looks like a cat or dog got to it. Could have just been my now 30 year old brother in law though ;)

Sorting minifigs, noticed that red and black spaceman have yellow hands :(

Still organizing once cleaned, I sorted most out into color and size.

Working on Castle and Space sets

All the minifigs:

Two classic space sets almost done and bagged. I'm missing like 3 pieces for the grey one.

Trying to identify by graphics

Comparing pieces to the brickset site, super blurry pic, sorry. Just showing how my office has turned into lego central.

Working on a Blacktron set:
Comments
You have got a lot of great stuff there, can't wait to see what sets you are able to complete.
I found creating a separate bricklink want list per set that is missing pieces is the quickest way to record/purchase missing pieces. Takes a bit getting used to, but it's a good resource.
I had to do similar a while ago with my Lego collection (all put into boxes in the attic during my dark ages). While I could remember some of the sets I had (and as others have said sites like Brickset, Bricklink and Peeron are a god send) it did take me a while to work out what I had.
If I'd have known what I know now I'd have posted pics of the "unique" bricks on here (there is a "master thread" for these and the knowledgable folks around here will help you identify the brick ID numbers (and save you a lot of time and effort), then you can see what sets they were in and find the other bits, although you may well end up with a lot of sets with several bits missing like I did!
Anyway, good luck, have fun sorting the bricks out, and shout out on here if you have any queries!
PS if you want authenticity with your space sets I'd recommend checking out JangBricks videos, in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHxKFy8Q5QU (11:05 onwards) - without those I wouldn't have even realised the chin straps on the spacemen's helmets changed around 1983/1984, and helped me sort the right bits into the right set.
Good luck!
Jay
I definitely realized after doing 75% of it that color was not the best way to go. I resorted most of them into shape/size/part since then.
Thank you @MAGNINOMINISUMBRA for the tip on that part!
I'll definitely post more when I get a chance :) Tonight we took a break and my son got to open some minifig mystery packs with me, we amazingly got all different ones, and I got the one I wanted with the first pack, so we're on a nice roll.