Inventory Management: Notecards

OK, peeps. Today we’re going to deal with something that invades your inventory without you even giving it a second thought.

When you log in, no doubt like most of us you have lots of inventory offers waiting for you. Notecards, LMs, and (if you’re lucky) group gifts. And, like most of us, you probably accept them all and either read them there and then or deal with them when you get time.

When was the last time you opened up your notecards folder and actually took a long, hard look at how many items it contains? Go do it now; I’ll still be here when you come back, screaming ;)

OK, let’s deal with that. Some of those notecards you’ll want to keep, but the majority of them? You can just throw away. I’m not going to screencap this post, because it’s ridiculously obvious, so hop behind the cut for a quick poke and nudge and a few ideas on organising those gorram notecards that multiply like bunnies!

Inventory Management: Brushing it under the carpet

Edit: As I was proof-reading this, my webhost started acting up, so if the images aren’t showing for you, come back to the page in a few minutes and try again. It seems to be off and on, but I have to publish this post now I have it ready! OK, peeps. I looked at my inventory the other day and I got the heebie jeebies (and it’s not even Halloween yet). Not only has it crept back up to a frightening amount, but I had hundreds of unfiled folders, and that amount was growing every time I logged on. That calls for drastic measures, so if you’re struggling with hundreds of unfiled folders, too, and looking at your inventory in utter despair, hop behind the cut. We’re going to tackle this together, and I promise you that you’ll feel much better after just a couple of hours working on it.

Inventory Management: Pre-logout routine

Here’s a quick inventory management tip. It’s one that I’ve been using for a few weeks now (ever since I cleared out those two thousand old landmarks) and it’s working well for me.

At the end of every day in Second Life, or every individual shopping trip, we don’t always have time to try on what we’ve bought, or even to file it away (be that into a ‘new stuff to try on and fit’ folder, or into the folders that we’ve already organised for various clothing and other items). But what we do have time for, because it only takes a minute or two, is a quick weeding-out session of the items we’ve purchased and obtained that day.

Hop behind the cut for more!

Hints & tips: Working with inventory in Viewer 2

UPDATE: If you’ve landed on this page because you suddenly can’t find or access your inventory using Second Life’s new ‘Viewer 2’, please go to this page on the new SL for Nowt blog to find out how to fix the issue :)

EDIT: Apparently the inventory button on the lower toolbar may be an addition only in the Kirsten viewer (see my endnote). Unfortunately I don’t have time to check this out right now, so please be aware that you may not find that button there. Hopefully, though, you should still be able to access your inventory (and thus do the two-windows trick) by opening the Sidebar. Although whether Linden Lab have hidden that sidebar option, too, is open to debate and something I can’t clarify until I (damn it!) am forced to install Viewer 2 myself :/

I’ll admit it: I’m struggling with the new SL viewer, aka Viewer 2 (or, for purposes of this post, V2). To me, as a long-term user of the older-style viewer, it feels completely non-intuitive. I’m especially struggling with inventory when I use it for tutorials, but because it’s so vastly different from the old viewers, I have to take screencaps using both now, to guide users of both and show them what they need to be doing.

Here’s one very useful tip for working with your inventory using V2. That sidebar inventory is a complete bugbear to me. Dragging and dropping (the quickest way to move stuff around in your inventory) is a nightmare, and you can’t actually re-position the sidebar at all. One of the main things I do when working with inventory is to drag two inventory windows side-by-side together in the middle of my viewer, so having one of those stuck to the right-hand-side of the viewer feels very awkward to me.

Hop behind the cut for my simple tip. It’s so simple, in fact, that it was one of those “D’oh!” moments when I realised it ;)

Inventory Management: Wish You Were Here! (The Landmarks Post)

OK guys, this one is going to take you a while, and it might make you cringe a bit, but this weekend we’re going to be tackling Landmarks (LMs).

It’s a fact of SLife that stores move around and go out of business. It’s also a fact of SLife that they put an LM to their current location into just about every single box of stuff you’ll buy from them. And no matter how much we may weed out those extras the time will come when you open your map view and can’t find a bloody thing because of all the * and ! and [[ and whatever that store owners put at the start of their LMs. Why do they do this? Well, why do you put the same kind of thing at the start of your folders when you’re sorting inventory? Yup: it puts that folder at the top of the list. Same thing with LMs. A store whose LM reads ** Wonderful Store! ** will be higher up in your map view than a store whose LM reads Amazing Store. Is it any wonder that when you look among the W’s for Wonderful Store you can’t find it?

No more. We’re rolling up our sleeves and we’re going to clear out your LMs. In short, we’re going to begin afresh. Been in SL for a few months? Chances are you already have a bunch of dead LMs in your inventory, so instead of wasting time teleporting around to them all to see if they still exist at that location, simply clear them out. Yes, it’ll take you a while to build up your LM list again, but this time around you’ll be smart, right? This time you’ll delete all of those extras as you go along, and you’ll rename all the ones with the fancy tricks that mess with your alphabetic sorting system. This time around you’re gonna be organised!

Hop behind the cut!

This weekend’s inventory mission: Digging deeper into the shoe rack

Your inventory-sorting mission for this weekend is going to take you back to your shoes again, but it only applies to those of you that have bought fatpacks of shoes and to those that have bought shoes which come with male and female sizes. Those of you that have done neither, just take the first tip given here and apply it to any clothing and accessories you have.

Hop behind the cut for your mission!

Inventory-sorting quickie: The 10-fling boogie (do this daily!)

Stop scrunching up your nose and whining, “Mar’s nagging meeeee again!” :p

The very-popular (and super-scarily-organised) de-cluttering/house cleaning site Flylady.net has lots of suggestions, and one of them can easily be applied to your SL inventory: the Fling Boogie. Flylady’s Fling Boogie suggests 27 items, but I’m going to suggest ten, or five, or even anything. Here’s what Flylady has to say about it:

What is a 27 Fling Boogie?

This is a tool to help you declutter your home. Do this assignment as fast as you can. Take a garbage bag and walk through your home and throw away 27 items. Do not stop until you have collected all 27 items. Then close the garbage bag and pitch it. DO NOT LOOK IN IT!!! Just do it. Next, take an empty box and go through your home collecting 27 items to give away. As soon as you finish filling the box, take it to the car. You are less tempted to rescue the items. If you have two of any item and you only need one, get rid of the least desirable.

Here’s my suggestion:

No matter how long you log into SL for, whether it’s for a whole day spent shopping or with your partner, or whether it’s just for five minutes to pay the rent on your in-world home, open up your inventory and delete something. Never log off without chucking something away. Make it a rule: “I will not log off without getting rid of ten items from my inventory”. They can be anything: a quick search for ‘how to use resize scripts’ notecards (because once you’ve used one resize script, you pretty much know what to do), or the last ten ‘here are our latest new releases’ notecards from your in-world groups, or extraneous pose stands, or… you get the idea. Just don’t log off until you’ve deleted something. If you log on seven days a week, at ten items a day you will have thrown out 70 items by the end of the week. It will soon mount up!

Inventory-sorting quickie: Moving On

Here’s a quick post to get you started on this weekend’s inventory-sorting mission (in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to do one post per weekend, when many of us have more time to be in-world)!

If you’ve been in SL for some time now, it’s very likely that your inventory is stuffed to the gills with just about everything you’ve ever bought and worn (or maybe even never worn). As time goes by, creators grow more skilled, and our own fashion tastes change. Just as with my footwear-sorting suggestions, it’s very likely that you have some outfits by designers whose work you no longer wear. Maybe the designer’s own skills have improved and their earlier designs pale compared next to their newer ones, or perhaps they never improved and you’re just not wearing ‘those old things’ any more.

If so, why are you still hanging on to them? Set aside an hour or so this weekend for some cosy time with a posestand. Hop onto it and dig out all of those outfits. Try them on and look at them objectively. Are you really ever going to wear that again? Does the prim skirt look a bit crap compared to some of the other skirts you now have? Look it over closely. In your newbie days you may have missed something that your more critical veteran eyes would easily pick up, such as white marks at the edges of clothing where textures weren’t carried over far enough on the template.

Salvage what you can. Maybe the prim skirt is a bit iffy, or it has a system skirt and you just don’t wear those nowadays, but the top may be perfectly serviceable with a pair of jeans. If so, put the top into your relevant folder for those, and ditch the rest of the outfit. If you really can’t bring yourself to part with the outfit, archive it. Rez a prim, stuff the outfit in its contents, name it after the outfit (eg: Archive: Store Name – Pink Ballgown) and take it into inventory. If you find yourself with twenty of those archived outfits, then rez another prim and stuff the archives into that prim. Call it something like: Archive: All archived dresses. Remember, the goal here is to reduce your inventory!

Pick one fashion item at a time, so just work through dresses or pants or tops this weekend. Don’t overdo it, or you’ll get Inventory Fatigue and give up! And while you’re at it, sort out your inventory system for that type of clothing. If you’re working with pants, then create a new ! PANTS folder, with sub-folders for jeans, formal pants, capris, etc etc. For dresses you may want to sort by style (formal, punky, summer, cocktail, ballgowns, etc) or by designer/store. The trick here is not to force a new system on yourself; instead go with your own thought processes. If you wanted to find a specific item right now, how would you think about it? If you think, “I’m looking for that long pink ballgown” then file the dresses by style. If, however, you’re thinking, “I’m looking for that long pink dress by Specific DressDesigner” then file it by designer/store.

Try doing this next time you’re in-world with half an hour free, and you’ll be surprised just how many items you can clear up, while figuring out your inventory filing method at the same time!

Today’s inventory project: The sock & undies drawer (& a special note about beachwear)

Now look, this isn’t going to be as bad as the RL sock & undies drawer, okay? No more trying to pair up odd, lonely socks and no more weeding out the holey or threadbare ones. SL socks are already-paired and they never sprout holes (unless you bought them that way). They’re easy to search for, and to sort. As for the underwear, well… there are no greying bras or loose-elastic-ed briefs in SL, so let’s get stuck in.

Hop behind the cut :)

Inventory Management: Weeding the Shoe Bed

Okay, so you’ve tried all of my other tips and tricks for inventory management. You keep on top of deleting all those extra landmarks, posing stands, ‘how to use resize scripts’ notecards and the like, but your inventory is still out of control. Mine too, so I’m digging deeper now, and I’m going to tackle this latest issue one item at a time, beginning with one thing we ladies all love: shoes.

Hop behind the cut!