I started this tutorial as a way to help a friend the other day. I thought others would find use in it too. Inventory management can become overwhelming if you let it. If you’ve been in SL as long or even longer than I have, it can feel like a task of mammoth proportions. If you’re like me, you’ve probably accrued a ton of crap over the years that you never used, is no longer usable, or is just plain fugly. And if you’re a blogger or you own a store, keeping your inventory somewhat organized helps you in the end to being more open to creation and finding the things that you need for your products or your posts.
I’ve had to rethink the system to fit my needs a few times. This is the reason why I am suggesting making a list and think about your inventory before you even begin organizing. The following is my way of doing things, you may figure out a system that is better and works better for you and your needs. This is how I keep my inventory organized…
- [ctu_ultimate_oxi id=”3″]
Phases:
Take your time with each phase you face. Don’t overwhelm yourself or try to do so much in one day that you become burned out and give up. Spend 15 minutes to an hour each day sorting your items and then go do something else. If you want to do more in the day, split it up into segments of an hour at a time with several hours break in between. This breaks it up and makes it easier for you in the long run. Less stress, more fun.
[ctu_ultimate_oxi id=”4″]
Further Notes
As you go, you’ll develop other phases as you figure out what you need your inventory to do for you. This tutorial is just a stepping-off point to help you along the way. I wrote this as a way to help my friends with their inventory when they were struggling with it. There is no one way to do this; there is only one way that fits for you. I found when I first started this, my inventory was out of control. I was stressing trying to find items for each blog post and other events for activities in SL.
A few other things you can do when you’re bored and don’t want to work on organizing. You can set your inventory filters to each type, specifically Landmarks, Notecards, Animations, and Scripts. Then delete everything that you do not need. Delete all the landmarks from the store folders or things you bought. Learn to use the Teleport History and Search feature in SL more to get to where you need to go. See below for the list broken into chunks:
- Landmarks: Delete all landmarks that you absolutely do not need from folders.
- Notecards: Delete any notecard that is not needed, but keep anything that tells you how to use a product.
- Animations: Delete any animation that says “hold” or any kind of shopping bag animation.
- Scripts: Delete all scripts that are from boxes, join group scripts, or configure scripts found in shopping boxes. Make sure you keep your build scripts.
You can also search for specific terms like Thank You, Marketplace, READ ME, please read, and about. These items aren’t really needed after you read them the first time. I also delete copyright notecards because I already KNOW that these items are the copyrighted product of the person I bought them from. If you have full perm mesh items, you should already know the rules before you use them, etc. These are the only items I will keep copyright notices in so I can go into the card and see where I can use that mesh. Otherwise, on things that are not full perm or transfer, I delete this notecard.
The other thing that I go through and delete are Ad pictures from boxes, but I ONLY do this after I upload it to my CTS wardrobe. Doing these simple things, brought my inventory down about 20,000 items in addition to what I had already deleted.
As of today, I have around 88K inventory count, which is down from 179,000 items when I started last year. Like I advised at the start of this post, sit down with a piece of paper and write down your needs making a list of your categories and really think about what you need, and then go from there.
This is a system only you can devise that will fit how you live your Second Life. It’s also something you can transfer outside of SL into other areas of your life from Hard Drive organization to your blog. Have fun with it and try not to overwhelm yourself. I’ll write more about my current system and how it incorporates into CTS wardrobing for me…No one can really tell you how you live your life in Second Life. I can give my method, but it might not be right for you. Devise what fits for you. This is how I do it…Share your posts about how you organize in the comments! I’ll check it out! Have a great day, Adventurites! ~LA
Resources:
CTS Wardrobe – By the time I am finished organizing my inventory, I plan to have everything listed on my CTS Wardrobe. This way I can go to it and see what a pose looks like without having to start it inworld. I can see what a hair looks like without opening up the Ad or putting it on. I can look on my CTS dashboard and then search for the item inworld. It is handy for more than clothing and attachments, I also use it for poses, furniture and landscaping items as well.
Go Frock Yourself Organizer – I use this to store my saved boxes. It is “copy” so you can use as many as you need to store items you don’t need to keep in your inventory. For me, I use it to store the saved store boxes.
