INVENTORY - TOOLS that help

Hello,
where can I get, find Tools that help me to sort my inventory. I now have over 5000 items. Thank you for all your help!

'Thinc' have some great inventory boxes that you can store items in and retrieve them back again by just 'browsing' through contents of the box.....very helpful indeed.

I'm not sure what you mean by TOOLS? You can go and watch Torley Linden's Tips of the Week, I know he's done some on Inventory control. There are also helpful hints in Knowledge Base. For myself, I discovered the joy of sub-folders, prim storage and Thinc storage boxes.

After picking up a HUGE number of freebies when I was a newbie, I tried on or rezzed out every single item. I went to public sandboxes for anything bigger than a regular prim size. Egads! I deleted over 2,000 items in the first try. I did just over 5,000 deleted items in a two week period. If you're not sure whether to keep something or not, just make a folder for those items(decide on later, maybe I'll keep, keep or delete?) and make a decision another day.

Sub-folders can really help you find things. I used the already set up folders in our inventories for the more permanent stuff, like my best clothing. Within "Clothing", I have sub-folders labeled by designer or shop. Sure makes it easy to find outfits. I also have a section for Costumes, with more sub-folders. You can group categories of items this way.

With textures I found it easier to group in sub-folders divided by store/shop. Freebies are sorted by indoor/outdoor with wood, metal and so on.

I have even sorted my Landmarks into sub-folders and I tp to all of them every few months to make sure the locations are the same. If a store isn't at the old spot, I use Search and Slexchange to see if it is still in business. If I have something from there, I'll do check on Properties to get the creator's name and look for them in Search too. If I can't find the business, then I'll delete the LM.

You can store items outside of your inventory in either prim shapes or buy the Thinc boxes. Both have their pros and cons. I use both methods. I've found that it's best for me if neither system doesn't have high numbers of items inside. Again, looking at the Knowledge Base or the book called "The Official Guide to Second Life" will be helpful to you.

You should also keep in mind the advice of professional de-cluttering experts"If something new comes in, something old goes out".

One last word of advice, don't forget to use the blank window at the top of the inventory window. Type in anything you think you might have unwanted duplicates of. This is a great way to thin down your Objects list or move duplicates into storage systems as backups.

Hope this will help you.

I recently cleaned up my inventory and deleted all that was not needed anymore of had none value, but still I have 10.000+ items in my inventory. But still I can rather fast find what I want or need.

My trick is simply using a logical structure for the folders.

As example, under my clothes folder I created sub-folders for all kind of types of clothes:

- Clothes:
-> Sports wear
-> Normal wear
-> Lingery & Nightwear
-> Sexy wear
-> Swim & Beach wear
(and so on).

I have done the same for objects, textures and so on. The more items in a folder, the more subfolders to store them in a logical way.

Hope this helps a bit.

Morwen.

Cinders, sound like you're a very thorough inventory cleaner. I try to do all of the above now and then, but I get bored easily, so my inventory is always 'sorta' cleaned up... Just wondering, how big is your inventory? I have about 6,500 items.

Inventory management is a chore, but you really have to spend a little time organizing it.
I have around 7,00 items in mine, and finding stuff is easy for me,. My clothes, jewelry, hair, skins are all categorized and sub categorized. Household items are arranged similarly. I also have a "Shopping Bag" Folder that stays at the top of the inventory, for when going on shopping trips. Everything I buy goes in there until I unpack it and file it. Over time I've deleted almost all my freebies, and spend an hour or so a week cleaning the closets. I usually just sit on the deck of my house with the music on and go at it. Sometimes I'll go to a club that plays music I like and do it there.

never accidentally spend a good day sorting your inventory out on the Beta viewer, when it updates it goes back to the same mess you have on the real viewer

5,000? Is that all?

Like others have said, check out Torley's VidTuts. A lot of inventory management is simply putting stuff in the right places manually, but there are some good articles and such out there to give you a good jumping off point. Thinc also had some tools to help organize stuff, an I'm sure there are others -- but inventory is always a pain, and sorting it is like doing your taxes.

Mari

There are some excellent classes taught in SL on Inventory Management. Even though I am very organized with inventory and keep it around 3500 (with a lot of things in the THinC storage boxes at home) I still learned a lot of useful tips.

Check out events - I know ^ASL^ and NCI (I think) both teach classes on inventory management.