Fighting The Inventory Monster (and shopping while you’re at it)

UPDATE: When you’re attempting to do this, it is important to resist all temptation. My temptation is Xanthe’s sexy Phat Azz invitation to go hunting sexy pixel men Kiyomizu Hunt with her. As much as I’d love to do the hunt today, it would mean I will have more things to SORT IMMEDIATELY after, and so I got some Holy Water and sent to her devilish way. It didn’t work. She’s still talking to me right now and tempting me with shiny things. Someone. Make this temptation go away.

When I grow up, I want to have an inventory like Harlow Heslop’s. If you don’t know what I mean, check out her Inventory video tutorial here and just look at the sheer beauty of her inventory.

Oh God, it is SO NEAT. And oh God that soothing voice (This is going to be ‘totes awk’ if she end up reading this post and me commenting about her voice…but it is soothing, ok!).

Last week, Talifferrue wrote an article about Inventory Management specifically for Bloggers. It’s an awesome read, and make sure you take a look at it, because I took some of her tips to use in my inventory sorting today.

Before we start, some clarification:

• This is not a post on HOW TO organize your inventory. I’m still struggling to do this myself!
• This is not a post on how to minimize your inventory count (some battles are better fought another time, amigos)

This is a post on:

• How NOT to quit on inventory organizing activity because you were discouraged by it.
• How to KEEP ON shopping and/or receiving review copies without it adding to your mess and without you going bananas.

Because let’s face it. What’s the number one discouragement when trying to sort your inventory? The sheer number of it. And the second? Our FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) making us go out and buy things in the middle of sorting because sometimes, things just happen and we need things. Uhm. Yeah.

So today, we are going to trick our brain and discipline ourselves, so our inventory will be as ORGANIZED AND PRETTY as Harlow Heslop’s and Tali’s!

Useful info before we begin, summarised from Second Life Limits Wiki Page:

• A ‘fresh noob’ inventory is 2,210 items.
  • We all have this. It’s the amount of items in the LL default Library (where Ruthie is! )
  • Your true Inventory count, therefore, is your total minus 2,210, because we can’t delete this default library.
  • If you’re on LL viewer, you can hide your default Library through the steps listed here and your Inventory count will adjust itself.
• The maximum number of items you can put in a folder is 42.
  • Means you can have 42 items in each folder…well, did I just repeat myself?
  • ONE folder counts as an item. So if you have Folder A, and insert Folder 1, Folder 2, and Folder 3 into Folder A, you have 3 items in Folder A.
  • Ok, I hope this wasn’t confusing.
• The maximum number of items that can be shown Inventory window at any one time is 10,000.
  • Which means if you open ALL your folders to view, it will only show you 10,000 items.
  • But why would you want to do that??

So! Now that we know this, let’s begin tricking our brains into facing the Inventory Monstah. This is my example, but feel free to find out what works for you.

I’m on Firestorm viewer and chose to have my own folders shown under all other System Folders (LL created folders). And then I created an empty folder as a divider line (tip from Tali) to visually separate the System and My folders.

#1: My Own Folders

This is my own folders that I cannot fit into Systems Folders because I need quick visual access to it.

Pretty self-explanatory. My “Casa Zee” folder is possibly the most organized folder in my Inventory. Home & Garden items are usually sorted as soon as I get it…I only wished I was the same with everything else.

I have an “Original Boxed” items folder. This is where I put all the vendors original copies from when I buy things. Basically, I Buy –> Rezz –> Unbox –> Move the vendor box here.

And then I box all my items from the same designer together in a prim, providing they are copy items. So, in my “Original Boxed” folder, I have ONE prim of ALL PILOT items I own, ONE prim of ALL Kuro items I own, and so on and so forth. That is why my Inventory count is low. (I also do this with clothes, specifically GOS shoes, but more on that some other time).

Again, these are filled with Home & Garden things which is more organized. Story for next time.

I use the “!*_” in front of the file name so that it appears on top. I’m not sure what the formula is here, I just experimented.

#2: Where things get scary

Prior to this, I had 302 folders under the “Z=======Sort=====” cut. THREE. HUNDRED. AND. TWO. folders without a home. That was effing scary. I nearly committed pixel suicide by drowning myself in a tub of orange juice, but then decided that I have so much to SLive for.

As you can see, my Inventory count is low. So I had a slightly easier time with this. If your Inventory count is higher than mine, OMG, START NOW, OK!

This is the part where we trick our brain into actually sorting it. Like, how do you eat an elephant? You cut it up into several pieces and chew! A bit of a horrid example, but the essence of it is: when a huge thing gets divided into smaller things, it is manageable. Right? (Don’t eat elephants!!)

What I did was Folder-ing all my orphans folders into several, similar named folders. In this case, it’s “!*a_1909BC”, for 19 September Before Crisis. I don’t know. I just thought it works.

Transfer all your orphaned folders into one folder, til you reach 42 items (Remember the rule of One folder, 42 Items). When you’ve reach the limit, make another folder with the same title, just number it differently at the end.

The last two folders are items from my Received Folders. You can see how my ‘Received Items Slot is now empty, huzzah!

#3: Do this with “Objects” Folder too!

Now, do the same with your ‘Objects’ folder. Possibly the SCARIEST folder in our Inventory, amiright?

#4: Oh look, a new item!

Now we come to the part why doing this is beneficial.

When you shop inworld, new items coming into your Inventory will either go to ‘Objects’ Folder, or in its’s own Folder outside of the Systems Folder.

Like so. While organizing, I received a review copy item that went into my ‘Objects’ folder. And because my ‘Objects’ folder now is visually cleaner than before, I can see immediately what is being delivered to me and I can take actions immediately.

So now, I rezz it, and when it is unboxed…this is where it goes:

Under the Visual Cut

This is where you DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO GET SIDETRACKED.

Anything appearing under your “=======sort========” folder CANNOT stay there. You have to decide what to do with this immediately. If you decide to keep it, sort it into its’ proper folder IMMEDIATELY.

Unless you want to return to that scary place again.

Rule #1: No orphaned items/folders should appear AFTER YOUR VISUAL CUT at the end of your SL day

• It cannot appear in your Objects folder AFTER your visual cut.
• It cannot be present in your Inventory folder AFTER your visual cut.
• Everything you get after your 19th September folders (for example) MUST be sorted IMMEDIATELY. RIGHT NOW.
• That way you don’t accumulate things to sort, which is beside the point of this exercise!

Rule #2: DO NOT allow yourself a new ‘Sort’ folder.

• No. NO. NO. NO.
• NO.
• For example, my case: anything that appears in my inventory after 19th September MUST get sorted immediately.
• I cannot make a new “!*a_1909BC_8″ folder in order to put new things in and say “I’ll sort this later on”.
• NO.
• NO. NO. NO. NO.
• Because we all know what ‘later on’ means.
• Right?

UPDATE RULE #3: ‘Sort’ Folders are meant to be sorted

I can’t believe I forgot to write this part. OMG. SORRY GUYS. But I hope you knew anyway, right?

The ‘!*a_1909BC” folders I have there are not meant to stay there. These are meant to be sorted out, one folder at a time.

So each time you log on, make a point to remove at least 10 things from your ‘sort’ folder, however you named it. Keep on doing this and pretty soon you will have NO ‘sort’ folders, but pretty, pretty inventory!

• “Do I keep this item?” If yes, send it to its’ own Category folders.
• “Do I hate this item?” Give yourself 5 seconds to regret your purchase, and then send it to Trash
• “I don’t even remember I had this!” Pretty sure it’s not an important item, then!
• “Why did I even bought this? What is this?” TRASH IT.

If you don’t remember what it is, if you don’t remember why you bought it…it was not important to begin with and you never needed it anyway (because you have SLived your SLife without using it all this while, what makes you think you will start now?)

Right.

I can’t believe I missed writing this part. Excuse me while I sit in the naughty corner. Kthxbai.

There you go, my method to keep me from stabbing my eyes with a baguette. Hopefully this gives you a bit of an idea and motivation on how to conquer that huge monster, and still won’t miss out on new things coming into your inventory. Just remember the rules and keep on emptying that sorting folders and maybe then our Inventory can stand as pretty and neat as Harlow’s and Tali’s!

WE CAN DO IT!

What’s your tip? I’d love to learn a better way!