One of the most difficult features for both newbies and veterans of Second Life to manage is the hard to navigate and terribly messy inventory system. Folders upon folders of outdated products, duplicates, lost items, and things you completely forgot you purchased are all hidden somewhere in the depths of folders you’ve accumulated over time.
But don’t worry! It doesn’t have to be a scary endeavor to manage. We’ve gathered some guidelines and secret tips to get your inventory freshened up and easy to navigate!
New year, new inventory. Find a sandbox, hop on your pose stand, and let’s get started!
** Note, we’ll be demonstrating these tips using Firestorm Viewer 5.0.1.52150 – your interface may look different, but the tips should still be applicable for many versions and viewers!
Create the Basic Folders
Start by outlining the basic structure of items you have. To begin, don’t get too detailed! Reorganize your items into their very general folder, then you can go back into each folder and make sub-categories later on.
- Clothing
- Shoes
- Accessories
- Body
- Hair
- Decorations
- Furniture
- Buildings & Structures
- Animals
- Cars & Riders
- Textures
- Poses
- Animations & Dances
- Holiday
- Games
- Scripts
Everyone’s inventory is very different. You’ll be able to customize this outline specific to you – and you’ll most certainly be adding folders as you go!
Again, make sure at this step you are only making the very general folders, then going back into each folder later to organize them further. This will help make a big task not so daunting to start!
Delete the Demos
Before you get started, do a quick inventory search for ‘DEMO’. Delete any demo folders and objects that may be hanging around – you can always go get another one for free if you really did need it! But chances are, they’re just taking up space.
Unpack Your Received Items (& delete the boxes they came in!)
The first step I like to take before doing the real organizing is to empty the packages out of my ‘Received Objects’ folder. 9 times out of 10 when you purchase an item, the designer will send you a folder with one box. That box has the real goodies inside and is meant to be unpacked. Sometimes we unpack the item and forget to delete the folder and box it came in.
Go through your received items and see if you have any folders you already unpacked but forgot to delete. If you’re not sure, unpack it again. You can always delete the duplicates later.
If you find a Received Item that is not packaged and already unpacked within the folder, you can move that to one of your main folders now.
Unpack your Objects (& delete the boxes they came in!)
Once your received items folder is empty, we can move onto the Objects folder! This folder is also one of the places that unpacked items you purchase can end up. You can delete boxes here that you’ve already unpacked, or unpack them again to be sure.
You will have a lot of items in here that are not in a box. For instance if you picked up an item from a Gacha Mall that was already unpacked, it will end up here. We of course don’t want to delete the goodies, so place these items into the folders they belong in.
Woohoo! Another clean folder. We’re getting closer to being able to easily navigate our inventory.
Linked (Lost) Items
Looking for an item you SWEAR you had and know the name of, but can’t find for the life of you?
If you’ve ever accidentally forgot to pay rent and had your items sent back to you in a big cluster, you may have some items in your inventory that have a grid cube next to them like this:
This is because you either picked up a bunch of items together, or someone returned items to you all at once in a group. Find a big open sandbox and rez this item. Everything will be rezzed just the way it was picked up, and one by one you can pick up those objects and they’ll be returned to where they belong.
There’s that platter of burritos I’ve been looking for…
Drag & Drop!
Now you’re ready for the big task, getting all of your objects and folders into their main category.
Personally, for a single item within a folder, I like to take out the item and delete the folder it came in. This just reduces the number of clicks to get me to what I want and removes all of the note cards and landmarks I have a thousand of.
Below are a couple of tips to help you do this…
Multiple Inventory Windows
After 8 years in SL I finally discovered this life saving inventory tip. Two inventory windows to drag and drop items from side to side.
Open up your inventory tab, and in the bottom left corner click on the gear. Choose ‘New Inventory Window’ – and viola!
You now have two inventory windows to work with. I like to use one to keep open the folder I am working with, for instance ‘Shoes’. Then in the other, I search for all of the shoes I have to drag into the other window. Such a time and frustration saver!
Filter by Type
Useful for finding all of your Animations, Gestures, Landmarks, Scripts, ect is the filtering feature. In your inventory window click on the gear in the bottom left corner. Then click on ‘Show Filters…’. Here you can only click the checkbox of the item you want to find, for instance Gestures. Then, drag all of your gestures into the gestures folder to make digging around for them a whole lot easier!
In this example, I would go through and delete all of the baghold animations as well. A good touch to a purchase! But I don’t need those anymore..
Delete those Pesky Duplicates
When an item is copy, you may find yourself placing and picking up multiple versions.
The item you want to keep is the one that is simply (transfer) delete all of the (no modify) (no transfer) items. You will still have a copy you can place a thousand times!
A good habit to get into is deleting copy items that you want to remove from your sim rather than picking them back up. You will still have the main item in inventory, but you don’t need more than that!
Delete Unneeded Sizes
Never going to use that size XXXXXS that your sweater came in? Delete it! Keep the one, or ones that you will use. This will help you know exactly which one to attach the next time you go to wear it! And remember, if you end up needing another size down the line, you can always redeliver.
Resist the Hoarding Temptation
If you don’t know what an item is, rez it or try it on. If it’s hideous and you would never want your friends to see it… it’s time to say goodbye.
Yes, I mean to that beautiful prim dress you purchased in the summer of 2010 and haven’t tried on since. You can do it, be strong.
Sub Category Organizing
Once you’ve finished organizing all of your items and folders into their main folder, you can go back in and organize them further if you wish. An example would be:
- Hair
- Short
- Long
- Updo
- Occasion
Or
- Hair
- Blonde
- Short
- Long
- Updo
- Occasion
- Brunette
- Black
- Red
- Pastel
- Blonde
Make this specific to your items and inventory – organize however you want!
Upkeep
Now that the hard work is done and you’ve got a squeaky clean inventory, make sure to keep it clean by:
- Deleting the boxes and folders that you’re goodies came in
- Deleting demos after you’ve tried them out
- Organizing into your main folders as often as possible
- Unpacking linked/lost items as soon as you see them
- Deleting copies rather than keeping multiple
- Deleting sizes of clothing you’ll never use
- Deleting old outdated items that you’ll never use again
Managing your inventory may seem like a daunting task, but the time it will take you to do it will save you just as much when you go looking for that item you have in mind!
Take it in small steps and work on it day by day. You may just find some hidden treasures you forgot about along the way!
Good luck!
Delilah Greyson (amoralie.triellis)
ZoHa Islands Blogger