Inventory Blues

Inventory is a constant battle. It is difficult not to pick up things -- even if you aren't a shopper. All those items end up in folders in you inventory pane and sorting through the multitude can be both confusing and disheartening. Somewhere along the way most of us decide to tackle both organization and clean out.

Bells Semyorka has been running features on how she deals with her inventory. There are some good tips in her posts. My personal favorite is deleting unneeded notecards and landmarks. I did that and got rid of 3,000 items. Who knew there were that many offenders?

Now I am pretty sure that I deleted a few things I shouldn't have, the notecard for my integrated AO was one of them. Eventually one gets very tired of the click and delete exercise and bleariness ensues, but I will deal with missing info as it arrises.

I have a few extra tips to add that may get your inventory even skinnier. Most of these are fairly obvious, but here they are in no particular order:

• If you have outfits that you have made using the older style viewer, check those for repeats and outmoded looks. BEFORE deleting any outfits, however, be sure you have checked any no copy items for usability. The outfit in general may be out of style, but that one only necklace that you loved in 2009 may still be a winner.

• Check for duplicates of copy items. Oftentimes we rez things in world (furniture in particular) and then pick it up again creating a duplicate. You really don't need seven copies of that dogwood tree. Just save the one copy and rez in world from it. 

• Delete Imported Library items. If you ventured over into Viewer 2 territory and then made a hasty retreat, you may have a folder in your inventory marked something like "Imported Library Items". If you don't want them, a simple click gets rid of lots of stuff.  

• Are you a hunter that never unpacks their finds? I know there are LOTS of you out there. If you still have boxes from last season or last year, you will most likely never miss them. Give them up and vow to actually OPEN the things you find in your next hunt.

• If you have items you seldom use but can't part with, pack them up in a box or boxes and name accordingly. Those 50 Christmas textures won't be coming in handy for almost another year, for example.

• When you get to the try on and weed through part of the inventory exercise, be tough and only keep your favorite of similar items. How many pairs of navy blue jeans can one girl use? Rust colored tights? Simple white tanks?  My answer is frequently "one" and sometimes "two" if there are enough difference in style to warrant the saving.

• If you never use Gestures, you can delete them from your inventory. You cannot delete the folders.

Once you have your inventory folders in place, think long and hard about changing the order or moving things around. After a year or so of looking for something in one spot, it is difficult to find it in a new place.


As you work on your inventory, add to the file or folder names when you can. The more descriptive you can be, the easier it will be to find something later. Good luck. A little bit every day makes cleanup a fairly painless project.

* For any of you wondering why I have some empty folders in my list, those are from trying out a Viewer 2 model. They are built in the database and cannot be deleted or moved. So ignoring them is the only answer *wink*.

There are of course several layers of subfolders that you do not see. So for example, Clothing - Tops - Shirts - Indie Rose pleated corporate peach shirt and hud - ~*INDIE ROSE*~ Silk Blouse {Peach} and finally the top I wore in the last post, ~*INDIE ROSE*~ Silk Blouse (j) {Peach}. Whew!