Please share tips on how you organize your inventory

[Nimue Galatea]

Can't find any good guides or YouTube videos on this, so am going ahead and asking the SL community directly. Inventory mayhem!

[Fionalein]

I never unpack furniture (only No copy ones) and keep the package for less space (now that I think of it vehicles make the same logic: if you can rez it, you also have place to unpack it there)

I have big folders, "my avatars" "avatar parts" "items" "clothing" and supfolders by manufacturer or ietm time (items has vehicles, furniture and game huds and so on)

 

One of my friends deletes all cloth she has no bodies for and keeps the box around if she ever shoudl get other bodies (nice idea)

Edited April 20, 2018 by Fionalein

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1. Take a deep breath.
2. Open your inventory.
3. 

[Bryseus]

I make separate folders like: hair,clothes, shoes, furniture etc. un box everything and put them in their designated folder. I try to keep my objects folder and incoming download folder empty after I’ve unboxed everything.  That way everything is easy to find.

[JuliaFina]

15 minutes ago, Bryseus said:

I make separate folders like: hair,clothes, shoes, furniture etc. un box everything and put them in their designated folder. I try to keep my objects folder and incoming download folder empty after I’ve unboxed everything.  That way everything is easy to find.

Love that idea...I'm going to try that.

[Coffee Pancake]

I use a combination of 2 cunning tricks.

1. Catznip auto inventory sorting .. I buy something, and it's auto-magically placed in a folder "Shopping/<region name>/<date>/" .. unpacking items places the folders in the same location in inventory as the original item. 
2. For everything I purchased before this feature was added, I either search .. or have simply forgotten I own it and depend on other people to remind me.

 

[Akasha Sternberg]

I did a blog post on my system not long ago *coughs ...shameless self-promo*

[greek Wingtips]

I think one way would help would be for firestorm and LL  to create an option to colour code the folders and directories, this would be such a great idea and easy to organise.

[Paul Hexem]

Psh. Organization is for people that don't know how to abuse the Search function. 

[Skell Dagger]

You're the one who has to work with your own inventory, so it should make sense to you. Someone else's tips might not gel with how you view your inventory. That said, my method (for my 150,000+ inventory) runs thus:

I create sub-folders within the main inventory folders. For example, in the BODY PARTS folder I have (among others) the following:

• Skin appliers
• Hair
• Hairbase appliers
• Eye appliers
• Brow appliers
• Brow-shapers
• Shapes
• Mesh bodies
• Mesh heads
• Mesh hands & feet
• Physics layers

Each of those folders is preceded by a ! and a space, to push it to the top of the folder. If I don't have time to file properly before logging off, I shove everything into the relevant top-level folder, to be unpacked and sorted during my next login.

Within the CLOTHING folder I have basic (again, with the ! and space at the start) top-level folders such as:

• Accessories (sub-divided, as will be shown shortly)
• Footwear
• Jackets
• Pants
• Suits
• etc

Accessories then get sub-divided into things like:

• Applier makeup (sub-divided into folders per head brand. E.G. Catwa, Lelutka)
• Applier nails (as above, for body brand)
• Piercings (sub-divided into Bento-rigged and non-bento)
• Belts
• Hats
• etc

When it comes to other sub-folders, consider how you think of items when you want to find them. Do you think I want a light blonde updo hairstyle or do you think I want a blond hairstyle from Truth? If it's the first, you think by style. If it's the second, you think by store name/designer (especially in the case of designers who have a specific style). Organise the bulk of your inventory according to how you think. I tend to think by designer, so the bulk of my main folders are sub-divided by designer name. Only the items that are odds-and-sods from other designers I don't buy from often go into my more generic 'jackets', 'suits' etc folders.

You don't need to delve into much more than two folders deep. If you find yourself creating folders like: Hair > Blonde > Updos > Truth then you're just creating a lot of 'click-work' for yourself. Instead, change folder names, so you'd have (by colour) -

Or by store -

One huge tip I can give you is - after any clothing shopping spree - take the time to unpack and sort as you go. Create boxes for 'unworn sizing', into which you throw all the rigged-for-mesh-body-you-don't-wear clothing (because you never know if you'll buy that body in future, and hey presto: you'll have a big archive of clothing for it).

Landmarks always get thrown out (go to the creators' picks for the current store LM; most [not all, mind you] creators keep their store locations up to date in their picks, and those that don't clearly aren't interested in making a sale!), as do unpacker scripts, notecards, and 'hold bag' poses (unless they're good enough to use for blogging, in which case they get moved into a specific folder under ANIMATIONS for that).

As a blogger, I have an initial sorting system that's a bit different to others', purely because while I'm working with 'live' events I need to remember which thing came from which place. Each year gets its initial top-level folder, sub-divided by monthly folders. Inside the monthly folder I divide similarly to below:

Inside each event folder there's a sub-folder for demos. Before I teleport out from any event (but especially from busy ones) I shove everything from that event into its relevant folder. If I then crash on leaving I don't have to go through the hassle of finding everything I bought, either by digging through Objects and random folders, or using the inventory filters.

As I work through the demos, I add 'YES' to the start of each folder name for the items I want to buy. After I've gone back to pick up the full-priced items, the demo folders all get deleted.

After a couple of months, all of those things then get filed into my main inventory folders. Original packaging gets boxed into archive boxes in case I need another copy at a later date, and the notecards folder gets deleted.

The other thing that I do is rename all folders that have special characters in the store name. It bugs me that !~*Xstore*~! will come above Astore in my inventory, which only makes finding things more difficult when - like me - you think by store name.

Edited April 21, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[Kotelle]

I usually keep the main structure of the folders like this:

- AVATAR

- CLOTHING

- HOME AND GARDEN

- OTHERS

Where I have a lot of subfolders, for example in AVATAR I have one main folder for head relates stuffs (and again, subfolders, for heads, skin appliers, make up, hair etc) and the same for body (bodies, skin appliers, attachments etc). Clothing is, I guess, obvious - divided by type (beach, lingerie, shoes, outerwear, bottom, tops etc). Home and garden is by furniture, deco, buildings with subfolders. Others is for everything else.

 

When I unpack new item, I try to get rid as much as possible from the folder, usually delete a landmark, a notecard and in case of clothing, all copies for bodies I don't use. If there's no extra hud, then I simply move items only to the proper folders, without the original folder. If there's a hud or huds, or several versions of the same clothing and I am going to use them all, I keep the original folder.

This is easy because I do not have so many items, comparing to what I have heard from others. I am now around 9700 but I am going to remove some, so I guess I will be again below 8k. But I am no blogger and I don't like gathering things just in case they might be useful later.

[Aislin Ceawlin]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

You're the one who has to work with your own inventory, so it should make sense to you. Someone else's tips might not gel with how you view your inventory. That said, my method (for my 150,000+ inventory) runs thus:

I create sub-folders within the main inventory folders. For example, in the BODY PARTS folder I have (among others) the following:

• Skin appliers
• Hair
• Hairbase appliers
• Eye appliers
• Brow appliers
• Brow-shapers
• Shapes
• Mesh bodies
• Mesh heads
• Mesh hands & feet
• Physics layers

Each of those folders is preceded by a ! and a space, to push it to the top of the folder. If I don't have time to file properly before logging off, I shove everything into the relevant top-level folder, to be unpacked and sorted during my next login.

Within the CLOTHING folder I have basic (again, with the ! and space at the start) top-level folders such as:

• Accessories (sub-divided, as will be shown shortly)
• Footwear
• Jackets
• Pants
• Suits
• etc

Accessories then get sub-divided into things like:

• Applier makeup (sub-divided into folders per head brand. E.G. Catwa, Lelutka)
• Applier nails (as above, for body brand)
• Piercings (sub-divided into Bento-rigged and non-bento)
• Belts
• Hats
• etc

When it comes to other sub-folders, consider how you think of items when you want to find them. Do you think I want a light blonde updo hairstyle or do you think I want a blond hairstyle from Truth? If it's the first, you think by style. If it's the second, you think by store name/designer (especially in the case of designers who have a specific style). Organise the bulk of your inventory according to how you think. I tend to think by designer, so the bulk of my main folders are sub-divided by designer name. Only the items that are odds-and-sods from other designers I don't buy from often go into my more generic 'jackets', 'suits' etc folders.

You don't need to delve into much more than two folders deep. If you find yourself creating folders like: Hair > Blonde > Updos > Truth then you're just creating a lot of 'click-work' for yourself. Instead, change folder names, so you'd have (by colour) -

Or by store -

One huge tip I can give you is - after any clothing shopping spree - take the time to unpack and sort as you go. Create boxes for 'unworn sizing', into which you throw all the rigged-for-mesh-body-you-don't-wear clothing (because you never know if you'll buy that body in future, and hey presto: you'll have a big archive of clothing for it).

Landmarks always get thrown out (go to the creators' picks for the current store LM; most [not all, mind you] creators keep their store locations up to date in their picks, and those that don't clearly aren't interested in making a sale!), as do unpacker scripts, notecards, and 'hold bag' poses (unless they're good enough to use for blogging, in which case they get moved into a specific folder under ANIMATIONS for that).

As a blogger, I have an initial sorting system that's a bit different to others', purely because while I'm working with 'live' events I need to remember which thing came from which place. Each year gets its initial top-level folder, sub-divided by monthly folders. Inside the monthly folder I divide similarly to below:

Inside each event folder there's a sub-folder for demos. Before I teleport out from any event (but especially from busy ones) I shove everything from that event into its relevant folder. If I then crash on leaving I don't have to go through the hassle of finding everything I bought, either by digging through Objects and random folders, or using the inventory filters.

As I work through the demos, I add 'YES' to the start of each folder name for the items I want to buy. After I've gone back to pick up the full-priced items, the demo folders all get deleted.

After a couple of months, all of those things then get filed into my main inventory folders. Original packaging gets boxed into archive boxes in case I need another copy at a later date, and the notecards folder gets deleted.

The other thing that I do is rename all folders that have special characters in the store name. It bugs me that !~*Xstore*~! will come above Astore in my inventory, which only makes finding things more difficult when - like me - you think by store name.

I WISH I could be that disciplined. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

I will use the month/event naming standard for times when I hit lots of events or hunts very close together and haven't yet sorted things.

As has been mentioned by a few folks, inventory organization is a very personal thing.  You have to come up with a method  that will work for how you want to access your invenotry.

For primary inventory stuff, I use the exclamation point followed by one or more spaces for my main folder naming - I use multiple spaces to force a sort order other than alphabetical.  Within my main folders, I create folder categories using underscores at the beginning of the folder name, and again I use more/less to force the sort order that I want.  Using exclamation on the higher level folders and underscores on the inner category folders makes it easier for me to visually see what I'm messing with.

[Maitimo]

Folders, sub folders, sub-sub-folders. My inventory organisation skills would impress a British Civil Servant.

Everything is sorted by type (not by store name, I never even notice stuff like that). So for example, my clothing folder looks like this at the top level:

1. Complete outfits
2. Tops
3. Pants
4. Shorts
5. Swimwear
6. Underwear
7. Footwear
8. Accessories

Each folder is numbered so they sort in the order I want, rather than alphabetically. Open a random one, let's say Tops:

1. Dress shirts
2. T-shirts
3. Tanks
4. Jackets & coats
5. Hoodies
6. Vests

The next level below that separates Mesh and Applier clothing if there are any appliers (for some folders, there aren't). Then below that I have the individual items.

The Complete Outfits is for outfits purchased as a set that cannot possibly work unless all worn together; for most outfit sets I split them up, pants in the pants folder, tops in the tops folder etc. This folder is divided by genre; Formal, Casual, Fantasy, Goth, Steampunk etc. 

My whole inventory looks like this.

I have three additional top level folders that I use all the time:

• Unsorted: this is for items I've just purchased but haven't had time to sort. There's rarely more than half a dozen things in here, and nothing stays there more than a week.
• Storage: This is for boxed backups 
• Demos: This is for demos I've tried and want to buy but haven't purchased yet. I delete the demo when I've purchased the full item, or when I decide I don't want it any more.

Everything else goes in a sub-folder of one of the main folders.

I have never needed to use Search to find anything in my inventory.

[Rhonda Huntress]

At this point, my tip may be useful.

Don't try to take it all on at once.  Bite sized chinks go by faster and give you manageable start and stopping points. 

For example, first, move everything that is clothing into your Clothing folder. Then pat yourself on the back for having completed a step.

Next, you could make a couple of sub-folders in your Clothing folder called "Tops" and "Bottoms".  Then move any shirt, jacket or sweater into the Tops folder.  Just leave all the bathing suits,  underwear or jumpsuits where they are.  Just move the tops.  Again, pat yourself on the back for completing another step.

Anyway, work on the big things first.  Broad categories work best to start with.  Rather than trying to build a massive folder trees and put each separate item into its correct place,  start with the top levels.  What do you have the most of that's cluttering the root Inventory?  Start with that and move it somewhere.  If you are like me you have a few hundred shoes.  Move all those to Clothing to start with and get them out of the way so you can see what you have.  Once all the shoes are in one place (the Clothing Folder) you can continue with them.  Make a "!Boots & Shoes" folders and get all those shoes out of the root Clothing folder.  Keep going as needed. Boots & Shoes > Shoes > Flats > Sandals ... what ever you need.  If you only have a few flats you wont need to break out sandals, sneakers, slippers, whatever. 

One step at a time. 

One thing I did was create a folder under Objects called "! ! Objects that belong in Objects."
Anything that is not worn on my avatar or cannot fit in one of the system folders goes there.  Cars, furniture, trees, pets, etc.  So much stuff gets dropped into the Objects folder it is easily lost f that folder is not clean.

Another tip when starting is to create a folder in the Inventory root called "! ! To be Sorted" or something like that.  If you are working on moving all the clothing to the Clothing folder, drop all the rest in here for now.  It gets things out of the way so you can see what you have left.

 

[Bree Giffen]

I do the same categorizing using folders as others have mentioned. Lately, I collect so many mesh demos that I have to categorize those in the same way. I try to throw away as much as possible so landmarks, notecards, gift boxes, etc, get removed right away. I use alts for each mesh body that I get too. All my Belleza stuff is on my current alt girl who has no other mesh bodies or clothing from other brands and she has no system clothing, furniture, houses, building junk, etc. 

[MoiraKathleen]

I do a lot of the folder -> sub-folder categorization as mentioned by others.  One thing I do that hasn't been mentioned, I think, is in the system inventory folders (especially those like objects, landmarks, notecards, textures) I have a top level sub-folder  "! sorted".  Anything that I want to keep is put into an appropriate sub-folder under "! sorted" and anything that ends up getting put into the folders as I travel around (LM's or NC's from stores or events, textures from ads, etc) I can easily see them and decide whether to keep or throw out before I log off for the day. 

I agree with Rhonda's comments about starting with very broad categories.  Besides being a way to 'ease into' getting organized in small steps, it also gives you a good way to see whether you need more sub-categories or not, and if so, how you might want to name them (pay attention to what you think of first, when looking in your "shoes" or "dresses" folder, etc).  

I have a "~NEW" folder that I put things I buy into, until I have a chance to unpack them and put them in an appropriate folder.  I try to keep this folder cleaned up.  When I am doing a hunt, I often will create a special folder for that event to hold everything related to the event or hunt, and then after the event or hunt is over, I go through what's in that folder and decide what to keep and what to open/move to other existing folders.   Demos go into "~~Demos" until I either purchase them, or decide I don't like them (and then I delete them).

[MegaRose]

Oof.  My SL existence is spent organizing my folders.  I'm glad to hear a lot of the stuff I'm doing is also stuff other people do.  I organize by item type (dresses, hats, jewelry, etc) and then do subfolders for specific brands if I have enough things of that type for one brand (clothes -> jewelry -> chop zuey, for example).  I also add descriptive tags to items or the folders they're in, whenever possible.  I pretty much never have enough room to use all the descriptors i want, so I prioritize color.  I desperately wish for a separate input field for each item where I can just load up on tags.  As it is, I try to set it up so if I want to find a purple strapless dress I can search 'purple,' close every folder but the dresses folder, then skim the results for 'strapless' (or search 'strapless' then find 'purple').

Things that haven't been unpacked, categorized, and tagged go into an ever-growing Temp folder.  My goal is to someday clean out the Temp folder, which is impossible because new events with free gifts pop up every week...

I also have a folder labeled 'Fitted for meshes I don't own.'  Anything that doesn't come with classic sizes nor sizes for the meshes I do own just gets dumped straight into there, but eventually I'll try to sort it out by body type.  And then if I ever get a new body then I can drag those folders straight down into the folder for that body.  But for now it's just another dumping ground folder.

I save landmarks, but I delete ad textures.  I'm considering taking my own screencaps for certain things so that I can more easily remember what they look like without having the store ad in the folder.  Makeup appliers especially need this, even if I tagged all their folders the subtle difference in color/shape between lipsticks can be very hard to describe.

[LittleMe Jewell]

6 hours ago, MegaRose said:

I save landmarks, but I delete ad textures.  I'm considering taking my own screencaps for certain things so that I can more easily remember what they look like without having the store ad in the folder.  Makeup appliers especially need this, even if I tagged all their folders the subtle difference in color/shape between lipsticks can be very hard to describe.

The one thing I always save and wish that I actually had for every item of clothing, shoes, hair (basically anything I can wear), is the ad texture. I can look at the texture much faster than wear an item to see if I want it right now.  For some of my staple items - tank tops, corsets, bodysuits - if they don't have a picture, then I take my own and save it on my computer.  Primarily, this is because there just are not enough characters allowed to adequately describe many items.

Edited April 22, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[Lewis Luminos]

I do pretty much the same as the rest of you with folders and subfolders.

One thing I have changed recently, is moving everything our of the Objects folder and put it in a new top-level folder called My Objects. Now the original Objects folder is effectively an "Unsorted stuff" folder.

When I buy something I delete all the landmarks, bag-holding scripts etc and most of the notecards (unless there are detailed instructions I might need in the future). If there's an ad picture, I keep that; it's useful for seeing what clothing looks like without taking it out and wearing it. I don't delete unused sizes of mesh clothes though; because who knows what mesh body I may get in the future. I've even found a use for the Niramyth Aesthetic ones; some of them fit my Jomo wolf avatar.

There is one area of my inventory that is still in dire need of better organisation though, and that's my textures and snapshots. There are a lot of uploaded and shared snapshots in my textures folder; I keep moving them but I swear they breed! 

[Buttacwup Float]

I use a tool called CTS Wardrobe with a healthy dose of the awesome inventory features in the Catznip viewer.

Like many I make use of a lot of subFolders to divide things. The wardrobe tool helps a ton with this. 

I make videos about Wardrobe and other SL and opics including the inventory features of Catznip. They are on my blog at everythingbutta.net.

[LittleMe Jewell]

6 minutes ago, seanabrady said:

.... the awesome inventory features in the Catznip viewer.

I do log in with Catznip when I'm doing hard core inventory work because of the awesome new inventory features.  I desperately want those Catznip inventory features to be incorporated into Firestorm.......... like really, really bad.

Inventory is the one area that I think most viewers really fall down on.  There are so many things that could be done in that area to help people out.

Edited April 22, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[Talligurl]

How do I organize my inventory? LOL That's funny.

[Sandy Schnook]

30 minutes ago, seanabrady said:

I use a tool called CTS Wardrobe with a healthy dose of the awesome inventory features in the Catznip viewer.

Like many I make use of a lot of subFolders to divide things. The wardrobe tool helps a ton with this. 

I make videos about Wardrobe and other SL and opics including the inventory features of Catznip. They are on my blog at everythingbutta.net.

*waves to Buttacwup Pwincess. 

I use the same tool, CTS Wardrobe.  I've eliminated my need for links (they really can bloat inventories) and have an visual reference to everything I've uploaded to my page so far.  If you use it with RLV, you can get dressed from your page.  Feel free to take a look at my profile picks or everythingbutta.net to see it in action.  It does make you think of what you use, how much you use things and how to improve your sorting. 

Like Lewis above, if I don't need an LM, NC, script, animation calling card or sound, I get rid of them.  I do get rid of the sizes I don't need if I have the vendor box and the item is copy.  I can always pull another size from the box later.

[Ariel Vuissent]

Poorly.

Seriously, I have great intentions and horrible followthrough. However, the intentions go like this:

Make a bunch of folders. I use the default folders, and make subfolders in there, so my default Clothing folder has subfolders labelled Bottoms, Tops, Dresses, etc.; and then THOSE subfolders have subfolders, so for Bottoms I'll have Pants, Skirts, Shorts, Capris, and then in those I might have something like Jeans, Trousers, Leather. Or, for Skirts, Short, Long, Medium. Then I go through each clothing item folder, delete anything extraneous like unnecessary landmarks and notecards, and move to the appropriate folder and subfolder. For items that have more than one category that applies (I have a couple dresses that also include a shirt version), I'll make a copy of the folder, if possible, and save the item in both applicable locations. 

THEN, as I sort through, I take pictures. Snapshots saved to folders on my computer that have names to match the folders in my inventory work well. Alternatively, there's a nifty wardrobe device that lets you save and tag pictures, which performs more or less the same function as saving photos to your computer, but with the added bonus of tags. (Actually, with the wardrobe device, you can do both at once - save the pictures to your computer, then upload from there to the wardrobe.)