Inventory Management Tips?

I am fairly new to Second Life. I have been here just a couple of weeks. But I am rapidly accumulating a sizable inventory of items - some which I have purchased, some were freebies, and a few I even made myself. My inventory tree is quickly becoming a mess and managing my inventory seems to be a slow and painful process.

For those that have been here awhile, can you offer any tips on how to best manage a growing inventory?

Persephone Milk

pretend theres no problem. THats the only solution i have been able to unmask for this dillema

Agreed. It's best to just ignore your inventory. Mine is like a black hole.

Every once in awhile I'll feel particularly motivated, and will spend a couple of hours sorting through stuff (oh... you can open up multiple inventory windows, which helps tremendously when sorting!). After that, I swear I'll keep it clean, but it never happens.

Just wait until you start building! You'll have a folder full of items named "Object."

I basically make sub-folders in my normal inventory folders with broad categories. Like in clothing I'll have "Pants," "Shirts," etc. And in objects I have "Cars," "Architectural Elements," "Gadgets," etc. Not everything makes it in a folder and I have to go back and do cleaning, but at least theoretically there's a home for everything.

For textures, that's a different problem. Because although you can organize your folder, when you go to choose a texture they're all listed together, I rename everything starting with a two-letter prefix. Like "BT - Concrete" for Building Texture or "VT - Wheel01" for Vehicle Texture. That way in the texture list it's organized, even if they're all in one folder.

Good luck, and don't be afraid to delete!

Here are some ways to manage it a little:

I generally create folders for things that I need to get to each time I log in. I organized my clothes folder with sub folders of formal, casual, costume, other. Then I set up sub folders under each of these with entire outfits. Then I can just drag an outfit onto myself without having to go into appearence mode.

I have my plants organized by trees, bushes, flowers and other. When I create several things and they all go into the objects folder, I select all of them, copy and then paste into them into the folder they belong in, then I go back and delete them from the objects folder. You can delete right after you copy, before you paste, but I don't because of freezing up and having to log back on & off happening while you are trying to manage your inventory - things could get lost forever that way.

Sometimes I pack things into boxes (drag the items over to content on a box you create) and then save the box and delete the individual items from inventory.

No matter what you do - you will always find yourself looking for something in inventory or find that you have 50,000 things named object and have no idea what they are. It's just that this may help a little.

Rose

I have a folder for stuff that I wear named attachments, so its right up there with my animations folder. About all I've done so far..That and a seperate textures folder for ones I'm not using at the time.

Inventory management is a chore.

Subfolders and all that help, but the single most important thing you can do is assign everything a logical name. An inventory full of "objects", "snapshots", and "new shirts" will kill you.

You can open multiple inventory windows??? DOH!

Please..I want thumbnails for textures and a good search function....please..

Persephone, I'm looking at my inventory now that you mention it, andI think I'll just drink some warm milk, spit up, and go to bed. It's a mess and I just dont want to deal with it!!

Multiple inventory windows!!! Yay!!

It makes sorting and organizing SO much easier. I think if you have the inventory window open, it's file > new window. Or something insanely easy like that.

Do the Linden's a favour and clean out inventory today! And empty the trash!

PC

Send Shepp Proudfoot all the items you do not use on a regular basis. He will help manage your inventory.

I bet all of that junk does clog up the DBs pretty good, I know I have s super long list of junk in my trash already and I've only been around a week.

yep i think you start off bad because you get so much junk from LL that you will never use only until the first person sees you then they drop all kinds of stuff on you and as you ask around you get more stuff.. hmm seems like its ment to be

A chronologically logical way is to create subfolders by month for items, and other folders for specific categories you have in mind (for example, "Personal Projects" in Objects or "Photos From Friends" in Textures or Photos). And spend a bit of time each day or every two days, systematically going though and sorting it out -- in the long term, it'll be better. It's much more relaxing than doing it all in one several-hour period.

Also, a "To Trash?" folder for temporary stuff or a lot of stuff you wanna packrat but isn't important enough to you to sort, is a good idea.

At the top level of my inventory I have 4 folders:

_absolutely me
_me
_not me
_disguises

The '_' (underline) keeps the folders at the top, and I organize my clothes in wearable sets in each folder. 'absolutely me' are may fav clothes of the moment, 'me' are just second favorites, 'disguises' and 'not me' are stuff I don't wear often .

I have a folder named: Closet.
I throw everything in there.

I had one called Rug... but it got so bulky.

Ahhh... underscore! GREAT idea... I should do that more often.

Wow. Lots of great ideas. Thank you all. I find that inventory management is one of the more frustrating aspects of my SL. A couple of enhancements from LL could make this a lot easier:

1. A search feature ... search by name, creator, item type, date acquired, or date last used ... it took me forever to find my vampire teeth last night
2. Multiple select/folder select - moving/copying/deleting one item at a time is unnecessarily tedious.

I think the key is to delete what you don't want (or package up the garbage into a rainy-day box and hope for a day when inventory management is easier).

Thanks everyone,

Persephone Milk

Whatever method you choose/invent, make sure it's simple to use and keep up to date.

You could come up with a great folder hierarchy five levels deep, put everything you own in it, but when it comes time to use it you'll procrastinate because you can't decide if your new boat goes in Objects/Vehicles/Recreation/ or Objects/Personal/Watercraft/ or whatever.

If you make it simple, you'll use it. You can always complicate things later

Forgot to add, if you get into building/designing/animating you'll probably need a more complex system of folders. I do for my own projects, but for stuff I buy I basically have generic drop folders.

I've been around for over a year, am decended from a dedicated packrat, and never throw anyting away. I keep everything in one folder called "Objects" and sort it by Date. I try to make sure the first part of every object's name is the word I'd most likely use when trying to find it (so "chair, electric" instead of "electric chair" and then use the limited seach ability of selecting the Objects folder and starting to type out a word. If the object the find gets isn't the one you want, click the object just below it and type the word again.

I only put things in folders if I have a number of related items and I know I'm not going to use them for a while, like a discontinued project. I prefer to keep things in one long chronological stack so that an "Object" suck between two "chair, electric"s is most likely something to do with them since it was picked up at the same time.

YES.

In continuing this thoughtline...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

a cute little Search field for the Inventory window would be awesomeriffic!

Just type your query in, and have it bring back the results -- drag and rez as necessary, or whatever else you plan to do.

Simple, efficient, intuitive.

It would be nice if I could filter out objects based in their permissions. So the no copy ones I can spot immediately and move to a different folder.

I did some purging the day before. I made a "cabinet" in-world. There I made different sections like crap lash likes but doesn't use, crap for lash's cross-dressing tendencies, crap lash made and can't stand anymore, etc. Then I deleted whatever copies I still had of these in my inventory.

If the cabinet got erased, I wouldn't mind. Everything in it is, well, crap.

My inventory dubbed *the abyss* has me scared. Everytime I dive into it I have to have a search & rescue team close by *giggles*

a few things that I have done to help is

#1 folders, sub folders, sub folders sub folders.

for example I have a folder for events. Then within that folder is a mentoring (among others) & in that mentoring folder is a folder for each mentoring or class I host. This way when I need something I know just where to find it.

#2 (which probably should be #1). declutter. IF you don't use it, don't want it, don't like it, tired of it, whatever. Get rid of it.

#3 set up a time at least once per week (depending how much you are in SL) & designate some time to cleaning & organizing your inventory.

It really does get out of control very easily. Best of luck to you.