Inventory Organization

Image Source: simrestartsecondlife.blogspot.com

I like to think of myself as a very organized person.

I make lists, I keep a calendar of activities, and I plan ahead.

Because I like things to be organized, I keep my inventory organized.

My husband is just the opposite.

His inventory drives me batty and I’ve been known to log in and secretly organize his inventory while he is elsewhere. 🙂

Of course, then he complains he can’t find anything, because why would you look for pants in the folder labeled ‘pants’?

After coming across yet another post about organizing inventory, I started to wonder how other people organize their inventories.

Or if they even bother.

There is no universal ‘best way’ to organize, and some of the advice I’ve read on the subject seems backwards to me.

I have no idea how people with large inventories don’t go crazy – mine is sitting at around 36K at the moment, and that seems hugely wasteful to me.

Especially as I know that fully half of it is stuff that I a) probably will never use, b) stuff I haven’t used since I got it, and/or c) stuff I should just toss.

Yet as ruthless a declutterer as I can be in RL, I’m a closet hoarder in SL.

I can’t bear to just throw things away.

I have no idea why.

One of my goals this year was to go through my wardrobe and pare it down.

It’s a project that I’ve been working on slowly.

Nai’s 365 challenges have given me an excuse to gallivant all over SL in various outfits, taking pictures.

For whatever reason, after I have taken a picture of the outfit, I have no problem at all tossing it in the delete pile.

I guess I need some sort of memento of it before I can get rid of it.

Which is okay – I’ve been taking more pictures, exploring SL more, and working on my photography skills all at the same time!

I’m slowly working my inventory number down (except for all the darn sales that seem to be going on!) and I thought I’d share a few organization tips.

Take them or leave them – as I said, there’s no ‘universal’ advice for organization, just pick what works for you. 😛

One of the first things you need to know to organize your inventory is the hierarchy of folders (which you can change).

Image Source: wiki.secondlife.com

There are two main folders in your inventory – one labeled My Inventory and one labeled Library.

The library folder is full of basic, generic items that are provided to every avatar in SL.

For the most part, I think pretty much everyone ignores this folder.

Most of what’s in it is old, clunky, ugly, and not really useful.

Everything else you buy or collect goes in the My Inventory folder.

You can choose how folders are displayed – under the little gear button at the bottom left of the inventory window.

The options are ‘sort by name,’ ‘sort by most recent,’ ‘sort folders always by name,’ and ‘sort system folders to top.’

System folders are the folders that have a little icon on the folder – things like gestures, favorites, scripts, etc.

You cannot delete system folders.

Since I have other folders I have created I want displayed first, I do not sort system folder to the top.

I use ‘sort by name.’

A trick for naming folders so that they appear in the order you want is to include other characters.

For example, I want my blog folder (which contains items related to my blog) to always appear at the top.

But ‘blog’ starts with a B.

Any folder named with an A will sort and appear above it.

So I add other characters.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, odd characters sort differently (characters like *, {, #, ~).

How do you know which characters will sort where?

There’s an ASCII character hierarchy – see here if you’re interested.

The top three ASCII characters are !, “, and #.

I label my blog folder ‘!Blog Stuff’ and it will go to the top of the sort.

Also, the number of characters makes a difference.

So a folder named ‘!!!Misc’ will sort higher than a folder named ‘!Dances.’

The next big step in organizing your inventory is to make folders for various like items.

I have folders with labels like blog stuff, house stuff, stuff for building, etc.

You can make sub-folders as well.

In my ‘clothing’ folder, I have sub-folders with labels such as ‘pants,’ ‘shirts,’ ‘shoes,’ and ‘dresses.’

Under dresses, I might have sub-folders labeled ‘cocktail,’ ‘ballroom gowns,’ and ‘vintage.’

The ballroom gown folder might have sub-folders of colors – blue, red, green, etc.

Of course, you may have a completely different system that works really well for you.

If you do – please share!

I’d love to know how others keep their inventories organized. 😀