SL for Nowt

If you’ve been in-world for any length of time then chances are you have spares of something. Whether it’s gifts from groups that you received once, then picked up from group notices when you checked them again and didn’t realise you already had them, or whether you’re a fan of the ‘Fish for This’ game at Sn@tch or you play a lot of gatchas, or whether you just like to hang around lucky chairs and lucky boards a lot and get spares when you’re the only person there with the correct initial letter to ‘bump’ the chair or board (even though you already have that item).

It’s time to get rid of those spares. Today we have one simple thing to do, so there won’t be separate tasks according to how much time you have spare.

I want you to sort your inventory by name. Those of you using an old-style viewer will find it at the top of the inventory menu (Sort > By Name). Those of you using Viewer 2 and 3 viewers… I’m not so sure. (I wish Linden Lab would stop messing around and settle on one viewer!) I would imagine the ability to sort by name is somewhere inside the little cog that you see right at the bottom of your inventory window, so look in there for it.

Now head into your Objects folder (stop cringing over there; I know it’s humungous!) and start scrolling down slowly. At some point you’ll come across ‘doubles’, like Mar has here:

She actually has three of one item! So she’s going to keep just one of those marked doubles and throw the rest away. That’s five inventory items she’s managed to get rid of. Might not seem like much, but that’s just one screen of a huge Object folder scroll.

Note: If the item is transferrable, then pack it off to an alt, or create a new ! Give to newbies folder so you can hand things out to new residents.

One other thing you need to do (and this is something that those with a bit more time to spare can get around to) is search to see if you’ve already unpacked those items, but forgotten to delete the boxes from your inventory. This is a huge inventory clutterer, and we’ve all been guilty of it. The quick unpacking before we log off, and we leave the boxes (assuming they’re not No Copy) sitting in our objects folder, where they soon get lost in the general miasma of All That Stuff.

Take it slowly. Sort by name again and open two inventory windows (File > New Window), so you can search for the unpacked item in one and keep track of the Objects folder in the other. Make it easier by working store-by-store, and if you have stuff that you haven’t yet unpacked then unpack it now, check out the contents. Try it on. If you like it, file it in your second window where you would normally file it (or create a new folder in your growing inventory filing system to put it in). If you don’t like it, bin it! OR, if it’s something you don’t want to wear or use right now (maybe it’s season-specific, like a Christmas tree or a Valentine’s gown) then create a new folder called ! To Be Archived, and put it in there, so you know to box it up into the relevant archive when you have more time.

One more thing (I sound like Columbo here!) – when you’ve unpacked those boxes make sure you delete the original one from your Objects folder. Not doing that is what got you into this mess in the first place!

Okay, so I’m a slacker and haven’t been doing these every day. Sue me! :p

(I need an excuse! Um… er… oh! Well, we all have more time at the weekends, right? So I’ll do these for the weekend. That’s a good enough excuse!)

Anyway, on with the show! Today we’re going to think about your inventory filing system, and we’re going to start putting together a mirror of it on your hard drive (or you can put it onto a flash drive). Read the post and you’ll see why.

For those with a lot of time to spare:
– Log into SL and open up your inventory. Then, alongside it, open up your Documents folder (sorry, I’m a Windows user, so Mac and Linux peeps just open up whatever your equivalent is!) and create a new folder there. Call it something like Second Life Inventory Mirror.

– Inside that mirror folder, re-create the basic SL Inventory folders, like this:

(Don’t bother with the folders for Calling Cards, Current Outfit, or Lost and Found.)

– If you already have sub-folders in your SL inventory, then recreate those folders inside the hard drive/flash drive folders.

This is going to be where you organise your inventory and eventually keep pictures of your outfits and various other items. Today we’re just going to start with your My Outfits folder.

– Make a simple white photo background (or grab the dollarbie one I put on Marketplace, here) and try on all your saved outfits, one-by-one. Take a screenshot of each one and use whatever photo editing software you have (Gimp, Paint.net, Photoshop, etc) to crop each one down. Save them into the My Outfits folder you created on your hard drive/flash drive, using the same name you gave them in your inventory.

You now have a very quick way of seeing exactly what each outfit looks like, without having to upload photos (which will take a while to rez, anyway) to their relevant inventory folders!

UPDATE: Libera has a great tip in comments that will save you from having to resize the snapshots in an external graphics program. Scroll down to read it!

For those with a bit of time to spare:
– Create the folders, as above, and whenever you get some spare time start taking and filing those outfit screenshots. Or you can begin to think about sub-folders for things like your Clothing or Objects folders, and working out a new inventory filing system. The reasoning behind putting this offline (on your hard drive/a flash drive), as opposed to working on your inventory in-world, is that you can begin to organise your inventory when you’re not logged in (because when you’re logged in you often want to do other stuff, right?)

For those with less time:
– Create the folders, as above, and whenever you get a few minutes to think about it, start working in those folders to create a new filing system that you’ll eventually transfer to your in-world inventory.

Since I woke up super-early today (and it’s a glorious day, so I’m feeling rather chipper) you’re getting your Sunday task on what’s probably still Saturday night for you :p And, since it’s a weekend many of us will have a bit more time free, so there’s an extra task for those that have a lot of time to dedicate to their inventory today.

For those with a lot of time to spare:
– Open up your Body Parts folder and make several new folders inside it, each with an exclamation mark and a space before the folder name (to push it to the top of the list). Make these folders for: Eyes, Hair, Shapes, Skins. If you feel they also belong in here you might want folders for prim hands and feet, hairbase tattoos, and eyebrow shapers, as well as physics layers (if you use them).

– Open up a second inventory window and begin to sort relevant folders into your new body parts folders. Run quick searches (‘eyes’, ‘skin’, etc) to catch the bulk of items first, then start to look for stragglers that you missed. This may seem like a big task, but you’ll be surprised how well you know your inventory (after all, you scroll through it a lot, muttering as you look for something, right?) and you’ll probably catch most items within half an hour or so.

– Sort each new body parts folder as it makes sense to you. This could be by store name, by colour (hair, eyes, and maybe even skins), or by type (hairstyles, shapes, skins, etc). Then sort and file the contents of at least one folder into those sub-folders.

For those with a bit of time to spare:
– Create the folders, as above, and run the same searches to grab as much as you can and stuff it into the relevant folder, but don’t worry overmuch for now about the stragglers. However, if – when you’re logged in at a later date and looking for something – you come across a straggler that belongs in the new folders, put it in there when you see it. Make that a new habit!

For those with less time:
– Create the folders, as above, and do as many of the searches as you can. Try to keep doing this, little and often, whenever you log in. Even five minutes now and then will have everything sorted within a week!

Here’s your Saturday de-cluttering task!

Saturday

For those with a bit of time to spare:
– Search for ‘pose’, ‘posing’, and ‘adjustment’ and get rid of all those extraneous pose stands cluttering up your inventory. Then, use my tutorial to make a simple one-prim, one-script Pose HUD to use in future. And keep on top of deleting all those pose stands! Make it something you do before logging off each day: check your Recent Items tab, look in every folder, and get rid of the pose stands!

For those with less time:
– Do the search listed above and ditch the pose stands. Leave the Pose HUD for another time, but remember to keep on top of deleting pose stands!

And, because I’ll never ask you to do something I won’t do myself, here’s the result of yesterday’s task: the 25 oldest objects in Mar’s inventory:

That little lot contains a surprisingly large amount of salvagable items. In order of purchase, they run from the bottom row, on the left (bought at Free Dove on the very first day Mar rezzed). That skirt and sweater set has stood the test of time and still looks great, as does the “70s Chick” outfit near the right, and all the items by S.Y.D and all-but-one of the Layniewear dresses. The camo capris in the “freebie 0L$ yellow box on the middle row are perfectly wearable, as is the red cardigan by Deka. The full-perm boxes in the centre of the middle row had to go, though ;)

I’ve been doing these occasionally on Twitter, but it seemed like a fun thing to start on the blog, too: little daily prompts to do a small bit of inventory-sorting. Think of it like cleaning your virtual clutter, Flylady-style!

I’m going to create a schedule of ‘little and often’ things to do each day. While it’s still in the planning stage it’ll just be one thing per day, but I hope to expand it so that there are options for everyone, no matter the state of their inventory.

So we begin with today, which is Friday (at least, for most of the world; those of you in Australia and the like get a free pass!)

Friday

For those with a bit of time to spare:
– Rez the 25 oldest items in your Objects folder and unpack them. Take a good look at them. If it’s clothing, try it on to see what it’s like. Some of it may be salvageble (a great top with an iffy pair of pants; you can keep the top!) and some of it may be instantly trashable. File what you want to keep (don’t just let it sit in the unpacked folder; put it somewhere!) and ditch the stuff you don’t want. If it has sentimental value or you might want it in future, rez out a prim into which you’re going to put things you want to keep, and use that as an archive box.

For those with less time:
– Rez the five oldest items in your Objects folder and treat as above.