Inventory Management Tips?

I agree with the subfolder thing... really does seem to help! I've actually been able to keep my inventory tidy for over a month now...even while learning to build!

I'm only three weeks into SL, but I realized on day one that my inventory was going to become a complete nightmare if I didn't do something immediately. Here are a few ideas I've come up with to make it a friendlier place to be.

The Clothing and Objects system folders are default locations for incoming items of the appropriate type, and I found that, even with subfolders under them, they got messy in a hurry when I went on a freebie shopping binge or some well-meaning resident dropped a couple hundred outfits on me. I've created "Clothing Library" and "Object Library" folders at the root level of My Inventory, and that's where I store everything that I've organized. All my subfolders -- like particular outfits or categories of clothing -- go underneath these new top-level folders. That way, I can receive a bunch of new items, and they don't clutter my organization scheme. Clothing and Objects now contain new, incoming items, which I move into the more organized folders when I'm in a cleaning mood. I switch back and forth between By Name and By Data sorting a lot, depending on how I'm trying to find an item.

Textures also receives all incoming textures (and screenshots from other players, which is obnoxious), but I don't just let it pile full of new items. Typically, incoming textures are screen shots, and they get dragged immediately to Photo Album. Because the Edit window creates its dropdown list of textures from the contents of the Textures folder, it quickly becomes impossible to use the dropdown if this folder contains more than a dozen textures or so. I only keep textures in this folder that I'm currently using for a particular project, which keeps it to a manageable size when building. Everything else gets categorized in subfolders of a top-level "Texture Library" folder.

I really like Milo Bukowski's earlier idea of two-letter prefixes for textures; I'll have to start doing that in my Textures Library folder.

My Clothing Library folder has enough stuff in it (due to incredibly generous donations from some nice folks with massive inventories) that its organization warrants further discussion. The first folder in Clothing Library is called "00 Default" (so it alphabetizes at the top of the list), and it holds my default look. 00 Default is divided into two subfolders: 01 Body, and 02 Clothes. 01 Body contains my default hair, skin, eyes, and body shape, along with my prim hair and several utility objects (Owenimations dance bracelet, animation override, etcetera) that I always want to have attached. 02 Clothes contains my current favorite outfit, including my prim shoes. I can drag the 00 Default folder onto myself at any time to reset my entire look to a common baseline, and it's easy from there to pick and choose individual items of clothing from my inventory when I want to customize my look.

Also, my default look is PG-safe, so I can drag it really quickly when I forget that I'm in my skivvies when I port to the Welcome area or something.

Further down the Clothing Library folder, I start to divide clothes by genre. I've got folders for Formal, Casual, Clubbing, Lingerie (for some odd reason my largest category), Avatars (anything that alters my basic body), Fantasy, and others. Within each of these, I have a folder for each complete outfit (for easy drag-and-wear), which are then followed by individual items that don't belong to a specific outfit. My favorite outfits in a category are prefixed with "00" ("00 Punk skirt and Hello Kitty shirt" so they float to the top of the category on an alphabetic sort.

Some of these categories, particularly "Casual", contain so many individual items that I also have subfolders prefixed with "01" ("01 T-shirts", "01 skirts", "01 jackets", which appear after favorite outfits (with "00" prefixes), but before the folders of outfits I don't wear as often.

I have a folder under Clothing Library called "01 Feature Objects" (alphabetizes right after 00 Default), in which I store attachable scripted objects that I don't wear all the time. "Feature object" is a term I picked up from LambdaMOO, a text-based online world I played years ago. A feature object grants the wearer scripted abilities, but doesn't necessarily affect appearance in any way. Feature objects tend to be important enough that I don't want to have to dig too deeply to find them.

Other top-level folders I use include Projects (sub-divided to store things that I'm currently working on right now, like "Chandra's pad" or "Particle effects" and Temp (where I drag things from store-bought boxes so they don't become immediately mixed in with the Clothing or Objects folders). My Object Library folder has its own subcategorization scheme, too (Buildings, Furniture, Toys, Tools, Flora, Fauna, Vehicles, Weapons, and others).

The Landmarks folder receives brand new landmarks, but I don't get those quite often enough for the new ones to interfere with the subfolders I've made, and I categorize a new landmark as soon as I've visited it. I have subfolders in Landmarks like Homes (residents' personal residences), Parks & Monuments (places like Seacliff), Education (Ivory Tower, University of Second Life), and Shopping. I'm about to subcategorize Shopping, though, because it's become impossibly large; I'll probably split it into categories similar to what I use in Object Library, with additions for different types of clothing. I'll probably need to further sub-categorize the "Shoes" folder, as well, to keep up with my bad habits.

I try to keep myself in the habit of moving objects I'm likely to keep into an appropriate folder as soon as possible; opening a second inventory window makes this a lot easier. I do have a Freebies subfolder of Object Library, though, into which I've poured the vast pile of free stuff that I haven't got around to rezzing yet; I'll pop the folder open now and then when I'm too braindead to build, too poor to shop, and too tired to socialize.

The one thing I have no control over is incoming folders, which I find particularly irksome. I immediately drag received top-level folders off to an appropriate subfolder to prevent them from messing up my top-level organization scheme. I would really like the option to define an "Incoming" folder, into which all new items are dropped; it would keep me from pulling my hair out when I've just gone shopping at a vendor that hands me folders full of outfits. Ideally, such an option would allow me to choose where different types of items go by default; then I could put incoming clothes into a separate place than incoming landmarks or textures.

And yes, I am extraordinarily anally-retentive about inventory. It's the only thing that keeps me sane, given the thousands of things I've already acquired in less than three weeks of playing.

Wow, Chandra. I wish I could hire you to help me sort my inventory.

Delete everything daily and never buy anything

Now there's an entrepreneurial idea, if only it were technically possible: a Second Life maid service. I could make a decent wage off that.

Maybe I should hold over-priced seminars with life-affirming activities and slogans, along with a T-shirt and a trendy tote bag with the seminar's name emblazoned on it. Self-help programs work so well in the real world, at least as a money-making venture.

But, to paraphrase George Carlin, if you read it in a book, it's not "self-help". It's "help".