Inventory Organization Help

[Maitimo]

On 10/29/2021 at 8:56 PM, Rowan Amore said:

After nearly 6 years of doing absolutely nothing with my inventory, I've spent the better part of the last 2 weeks clearing out nearly 80,000 items.  Don't judge me, please.

I know many of you have mentioned your detailed folder systems.  I've yet to figure out a way to sort all the items I have.  I can figure out furniture and landscape but clothing is another problem.

Do you sort by type?  Dresses, pants, sweaters, t-shirts or some other way?   By store, color, season?  

I'd like some ideas as to how to even begin.  

Thank you all in advance.

 

ETA:  I may not get to reading your replies until later this evening.  I'm going cross-eyed after several hours of clearing and it's a bit hard to focus on text.  😬

 

 

Most of mine are stored by type. For example: 

Clothes > Tops > Tanktops

Clothes > Footwear > Boots > Ankle, High

Clothes > Underwear > BOM/System >  Bra & Panties

I will also delete all the special characters off the front of a folder name, and add an asterix for my favourite items to sort them to the top. And things that are rubbish get a tilde added to the folder name because then that sorts them to the bottom.

The only folder I have also subdivided by season is casual dresses, because that folder is so huge, I have summer dresses, club-wear dresses and other dresses. 

[Maitimo]

3 hours ago, Mahala Roviana said:

I struggle with outdoor furniture. Like, is a hammock furniture or landscaping? I "work" on my inventory about once a week but it stays a mess.

Under "Objects" I have a "Home & Garden" folder which is subdivided into three sections: Furniture, Decor and landscaping.  Furniture is subdivided by room (kitchen, bathroom etc) and also includes Outdoor furniture.  The Landscaping folder is for trees, groundcover, plants, rocks, paths, fences and similar stuff.  I would put a hammock in my Outdoor Furniture folder. 

[Echelon Alcott]

This is how I organize my inventory, with some of the Clothing folder expanded; I could not fit the bottom folders and they got cut off. 

After I recently returned to SL, I've been segregating my old stuff into "Classic" folders. In addition to that, I've also been purging a LOT of things, for instance, builds/structures that are too prim-heavy, or things that I would never allow myself to get caught dead in them! 

[Bree Giffen]

I just use folders for tops, bottoms, underwear, dresses, outfits, etc. I use the same folder system for every avatar I have. I also made one avatar the designated house maker and she has all the furniture and house goods. If I am creating a business I will set up under one avatar and keep all assets for that particular business with them. I guess my avatars are kind of like folders themselves.

[Rowan Amore]

5 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

This is how I organize my inventory, with some of the Clothing folder expanded; I could not fit the bottom folders and they got cut off. 

After I recently returned to SL, I've been segregating my old stuff into "Classic" folders. In addition to that, I've also been purging a LOT of things, for instance, builds/structures that are too prim-heavy, or things that I would never allow myself to get caught dead in them! 

I can only hope to achieve that level of organization!

[Echelon Alcott]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

I can only hope to achieve that level of organization!

Rome wasn't built in one day. Take one step at a time. 

[Mollymews]

5 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

Rome wasn't built in one day. Take one step at a time. 

if I do what the romans did, then will take me quite a few centuries to organise my inventory

😺

[Ceka Cianci]

I'm just glad to have only a few things left under my library folder.. hehehe

My alt, I made sure to not let that one get out of control..

Mine was so hopeless at one point that I just gave up on it.. Then when I had a little time I decided to clean house and  get rid of tons of things that I just never used or will ever use again..

I couldn't believe how much junk I had just because of Nostalgia.. Once I just let it go, things cleaned up much faster and it felt like I could breathe better and see light at the end of the tunnel finally..

Then I clicked on my recent tab and seen my received folder.. I was like Holy crap!! This is where a big bulk of stuff is hiding.. hehehe

That's what i get for using the market place as my closet.. hehehe

[LittleMe Jewell]

I discovered last night that my "To Sort" and my "Hunts - need to sort" folders contain 60-75% of my total inventory.

I'm hopeless.

 

[Rowan Amore]

45 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I discovered last night that my "To Sort" and my "Hunts - need to sort" folders contain 60-75% of my total inventory.

I'm hopeless.

 

I haven't even begun sorting my received folder.  Maybe by the new year 2024?

[Marianne Little]

49 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I haven't even begun sorting my received folder.  Maybe by the new year 2024?

I only sorted the received folder in years, so I have 2915, 2016, 2017 et cetera. It was because it was becoming too big, and I had to part it in underfolders.

 

[Rowan Amore]

3 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I only sorted the received folder in years, so I have 2915, 2016, 2017 et cetera. It was because it was becoming too big, and I had to part it in underfolders.

 

I may just nuke the entire thing...maybe.

[Marianne Little]

On 10/30/2021 at 6:59 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

You do know that SL is an inventory game? (Ref)

What I have found is everything I buy has an expiration date.

When BOM was being developed people were saying keep the old stuff because we will be able to use those old skins and system clothes with BOM. Well... yeah but... a lot of old stuff looks really bad. While I was making outfits in early in my SL life (2010?) I hadn't started separating the stuff I bought by year. When I started looking to see if I could use older stuff with my new mesh body and head... I find I generally do not like older stuff. New stuff looks so much better. So, now I have to dig out old stuff to delete.

Now the new stuff I buy gets separated into dresses short, mini, micro, medium, long, gown etc. by YEAR. I labels my Outfits with a Year and month so they sort oldest first.

I have thrown out lots and lots of classic layers. I am going to kill the rest of old makeup. It looks so crude now, with lots of black eyeliner. But I have a few skins I still like. Not many. The clothes is all awful, except some that are really work of art. And my fatpack of Zaara leggings in classic layers have saved outfits so many times.

I don't know what to do with the good quality makeup that came out before I changed to EvoX. Throw it away, or will I regret it? Aaaaaaa. Maybe box it and set it in a folder. Every week my inventory grows with the weekend sales. Tons of new EvoX layers. But will it suddenly be a new head brand that the Evo Makeup will fit on?

Now that I see how great hair with build in hairbases look, I want to delete all hairs without. And all clothing with standard sizes. But what if it is a challenge about "Recreate your look from 2017" or something like that?

[Marianne Little]

7 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I may just nuke the entire thing...maybe.

Gods I want it too.

And all my poses before Bento. Why don't I do it?

[Rowan Amore]

Just now, Marianne Little said:

Gods I want it too.

And all my poses before Bento. Why don't I do it?

I think I might scroll through it real fast then close my eyes and delete the entire thing.  Heaven knows I probably won't miss a thing.

[Ceka Cianci]

I think I'm gonna mess with mine a little tonight since I took the night off..

There is still tons of stuff I want to get rid of..

[June Starlight]

I gave up on using folder system for my wearables and moved it all into CTS Wardrobe. It has images so I don't need to remember how exactly this pair of jeans was called. It has rating system, so if I want to look through my favorites, I can. And most importantly it uses tags, so I can tag something a dress, a top and a sweater simultaneously... because you know how it is with those knits. And when I will be looking in either of those categories, it will show up. 

Edited November 3, 2021 by June Starlight
typo

[Jolly Nova]

On 10/29/2021 at 3:24 PM, Lysistrata Szapira said:

Aside from my favorite brands which get their own folder no matter what year I purchased their items, all of my clothing is sorted by year and then by type of item:  subfolders for formal wear, jewelry, costumes, short dresses, tops, etc.  I have subfolders under some of these as well, especially for types of jewelry (necklaces/bracelets/sets) or shoes (boots/heels/flats).   If I have a lot of one type of item from a particular store (but that store has not made it to favorite status) in a folder, I will usually create a folder for that store (example: Short Dresses>Pixi Cat).    I periodically sort through those folders and put into store brand folders if I have more than 1 or 2 items from the store.

I also have a folder strictly for Luxe Box items that have passed the purge test over the years. 

I purge about once or twice a year, and move items older than a certain age into a folder called "Older Clothes (not to trash)" because I simply want to keep some older items.  For example, I recently moved everything from prior to 2016 into that Older Clothes folder (still sorted into sub-types).  That folder really came in handy with BOM because I had held on to the higher quality system layer items I had from the pre-mesh days.  Let me tell you it was a beeyutch trying on every layer though to judge it. Ugh.  I tossed a lot, but surprisingly I have some really old system layers that do look good on mesh bodies. 

I use exclamation points in my folder names to keep my top brands at, well, the top, but inside each top brand folder, I have again separated out items by type (pants, etc.).

Under each year, I also have a folder for Halloween wearables, and I always set up a folder for wearable things collected during Christmas advent calendar marathons (non-wearable holiday items go into furnishings and outdoor decorating folders).  The next year I go through the prior year and purge anything that no longer fits my aesthetic.

I tried sorting by color in my short dresses/tops folders, but with so many things coming with color HUDs now, I quit because it was rather pointless.   I also don't classify by season beyond things that are obviously holiday-oriented.

I must confess that every year I have a sub-folder labeled "Snarky Shirts" because I love snarky shirts.   For my collections of gacha clothing items from The Time Before (tm), I keep them in folders labeled by the store & gacha names for easy locating. 

I find using the yearly method most efficient as that makes it easy for me to find where to start purging.  By now, items from 2016 and back have been sorted/purged multiple times so I don't need to sort them again.  I've already started working on purging 2020's items. 

 

 

 

And now I wish you could come organise my inventory because I thought I was doing all right but then saw this and was like oh mah gah I’ve been doing it wrong. 

[Jolly Nova]

On 10/29/2021 at 3:53 PM, Fritigern Gothly said:

My sorting method, because a picture is worth a thousand words:

I love that you have a genitalia  folder. 

[ValKalAstra]

From seeing this thread, it's interesting how certain solutions manifest in multiple places over time. Like many others I'm sorting by type but I've also started to use a ramshackle tagging system.

Sort of like this:

Clothes -> Shoes -> (Flat/Ankle/Texture) Sneakers - Flame -> Item

The folders are self explanatory. Everything within ( ) is consistent to that subfolder, so all shoes will be tagged by the same system indicating certain qualities. Flat or heel, how high up they go, colour or texture,  etc. The rest is fitted to give a general idea and if I really like an item,  I mark it with special characters I can search for.

One of my biggest peeves is being unable to rename items themselves because of no mod. Can't even remove the "wonderful" store artistry of mangling their name with weird characters.

 

 

 

[Fritigern Gothly]

5 hours ago, Jolly Nova said:

I love that you have a genitalia  folder. 

Some are really old. I got a hold of my first lady bits in 2008 and I still have it. It was all prims, no sculpties!
I also keep nips in there (I have q few different ones), and the Lolas that were at one point almost a mandatory asset for women in SL 🙂
And there are one or two stray male bits, which I picked up for their novelty value (I don't wear them, it never felt right for me)

Anyway, the folder is there so that I can always find them 🙂

[Charlotte Holmeforth]

I mostly sort my inventory because I like being organised; it's relaxing to sort things. 

My LL folders are strictly for things that are sorted; new arrivals go into an inbox folder with subfolders matching the LL folders names, e.g. inbox > animations, inbox > body parts, inbox > clothes etc.  That way new arrivals are pre-organised even if I haven't looked at them yet, and my main folders don't get cluttered up with mystery stuff.

Most of the LL folders have four top-level subfolders - Free, LL, Mine and Pro.  That way I can always find things I made, and it gives me a clue about what the permissions are likely to be.  e.g. textures are usually full perm, but if they are in the Pro folder, they aren't ones I can share. 

I use outfits for organising clothes.  I have a basic body outfit, then lots of outfits with just clothes, just hair, or just shoes. That way I can use any hair or shoes with any outfit. I also have outfits for only HUDs and only gestures, which makes it easy to add or detach those.  If you want to do that you can edit the links in your 'my outfits' folder.

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

I keep saying I'm going to sort my inventory, but then I find something more entertaining to do in SL or I find something more entertaining to do in RL.

I'm a horrid procrastinator, even in RL, when it comes to mind-numbing tasks like inventory sorting.  Hence why my 'To Sort' folders have most of my inventory.

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

I user a hierarchical folder scheme similar to what others describe.

What we really need is better tools. See:

I really, really wish some programmer would make such a tool available.

 

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I keep saying I'm going to sort my inventory, but then I find something more entertaining to do in SL or I find something more entertaining to do in RL.

I'm a horrid procrastinator, even in RL, when it comes to mind-numbing tasks like inventory sorting.  Hence why my 'To Sort' folders have most of my inventory.

 

I've left my SL home maybe 6 times in the last 2 and a half weeks.  It IS mind numbing and why I let it get so bad.  I will say, I started with just shy of 180K items. I'm down to slightly over 90K so...progress?