I thought I might take a few minutes today to talk about something helpful. I am not going to call it a "tutorial" as I don't think I am that kinda qualified =) However, lets just have a discussion about our closets! Or... for the technical ones our INVENTORY.

You know, seeing as how I get a lot of review copies, and do an enormous amount of shopping, things can get kinda hectic in my closet. If I go a week with out putting things away in their proper "drawers" its a freakin' disaster.

Did you know that high inventory count slows your SL experience? So while organizing makes things easier, it will also improve your experience.

I don't really want to talk about ALL your stuff, because of course, my main blog focus is fashion. But I will throw a few things out there to think about.

  • USE your search bar, find duplicate items and DELETE them. You might have 15 LMs for the same place!

  • Speaking of the Search - - When you are looking for something, don't drive yourself crazy for a half hour looking for the shoes that you just can't remember where you put, god knows you might have accidentally thrown them in with your lingerie! (I do it ALLLLL the time *giggle*). **don't forget, if you need to quickly see what you are wearing, you can type "(worn" in your search tab, and it will bring up all the items you currently have on**

  • Also, frequently delete your trash, you don't need to keep the 30 different hair demos you tried on! =)
  • Frequently go through your textures and notecards, I know if you are like me and belong to every subscribe-o on the grid you probably get TONS of that stuff too.
  • Try and go through your clothes, see if there are things that you don't use much, or ever, but feel the need to KEEP. *shaking a finger at you horders* Box them up, just like you would do when you are storing things away in the Attic =) Hey, maybe create an ATTIC folder for all the stuff that is collecting dust. By putting a bunch of things in a box, it will take up less inventory space!
  • And lastly to make this whole process of organizing easier, don't forget that you can open more then one inventory window at a time! (CLICK: Inventory, File, New Window) This way you can just drag and drop from one to the other.

Now, on to the actual organizing.... how do you put your clothes away? Are you one for organizing by designer? Or do you prefer categorizing by the actual piece of clothing? I go for the latter. I am not sure its better or worse truthfully, but it works for me, for now. I am going to show you a quick screen shot of what my folders look like;


I also organize my jewelry in the same fashion, AND I use my Body Parts folder for things like; Skins, Mani & Pedis, Eyes, etc.

I should mention, I do however organize my hair by designer. Just so you can see an example of that:



My reasoning for my kind of organizing, is that I like to mix and match things, so its not *as* important for me to know who it came from, so long as I can quickly find a necklace, or a pair of boots!

So those are a few things I wanted to share, and open up for discussion. Maybe you have a way you organize that is completely different then what I do (certainly not saying MY way is the right one), or you have a helpful hint or tip for some of the newer users reading the blog. Please feel free to comment away.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post! All the stuff you wish you knew way back when, and all the stuff you wish you remembered when you're stuck doing a big clearout as I am right now!

One quick addition, I'm like you, I sort by type rather than designer for clothing, and then I subdivide by colour, so maybe - Clothes>Separates - Tops> Tanks> Pink.

I'd be very interested in seeing exactly how you've got your jewelry folder organised, as I totally can't get a handle on that. Do I sort by style, metal, gem colour, creator? Decisions, decisions!!

Mj said...

This is great, i do try but always ends up all over the place. You have inspired me to clean it up! Thanks :-)

Felicity Blumenthal said...

I agree, when you do have seperates its you need a section for that, I actually do bundle it all in casual, and sub folders for seperates in there.

As far as my Jewelry goes; For me, it works best to have them seperated in necklaces, bracelets, earrings, SETS, etc. Then inside the folders, for example, my bracelts - I have a sub folder just for bangles, which I cannot get enough of! =)

Hope thats kinda helpful. But you do bring up a good point...I might need to work on seperating into metals...that might be helpful!!

Thanks for the comment!

Felicity Blumenthal said...

Salt...good for you! It is a lot of work, but when its all done, it is SO great.

Sasy Scarborough said...

I used to do the by types thing, but found the difficult in the long run for me.

I then switched to by designer. Now my hair is like yours, sort of.

Examples :
Body Parts>Hair>D>Dernier Cri>Natasha
Body Parts>Skins>L>La Sylphide>Erin

Clothing Folder is different too

Sub Folders are

Acessories
Designers
Shoes

So it ends up

Clothing>Accessories>Belts>HCT Big Kid Belt

Clothing>Designers>C>CKS Designs>Gidget

Clothing>Shoes>E>Enkythings>Nana Heels

There are also numbered folders in my open inventory that are my need to go to fast folders.

numbering them in order of priority.

This seems nuts I know lol , but the alphabet kicked in a few months ago. You only have so much screen and scrolling is painful.

So putting all the designers by alphabet meant that the rest stay hidden when I know I am only wanting a particular designer/item.
and as so many stores change the way they type their vendors/boxes etc the folder names are often different, so they don't always stay together, this fixes that.

about notecards and textures. if you have your settings to open on accept, then once you have read them you can immediately choose discard not keep, that way if its something you do not actually need, but did have interest in, it doesn't stay filling your inventory.

Great post and sorry I rambled lol.

xox Sasy xox

Felicity Blumenthal said...

Thanks for all the imput Sasy...

I actually really like how you alphabetize it as well.

I hate opening something and having it just scroll down for ages.

I have my settings set the same for textures, etc...but a lot of time, I keep things, to go back to.

But it is a good point to make, for those who don't know!! =)

Feel free to ramble any time. I get lonely over here by myself! HEHE

Kit Maitland said...

GREAT Post...as an inventory neat freak...I always love to see how others organize...I get lots of great tips that way.

I used to organize my hair by designer just like you...but then I am a certfied hair whore and so some of the folders got too big...so then I reorganized by type of hair (ponies..piggies..updos...short..etc)...and then by designer inside those folders. It's worked out much better for me as I usually know which type of hair I want when I go in to choose something.

Also as Felicity suggested...my jewelry is sorted into metal and then inside that into type (necklaces...earrings...sets...etc). It's really helpful as once again...I usually know what color metal I want going in and it helps pare down the aimless digging considerably. :P

Now if only someone could help me with my ooc texture folder...:(

Neferia said...

ur inventory looks just like mine:)I do to organize same way:)
easy to find what ever i am looking for:)

Sasy Scarborough said...

omg i forgot a subfolder lol Kit is a hair whatchamacallit.

I lied about my hair folders sobs

its Bodyparts>hair>D>DernierCri>UppyDO>Natasha

lol so i do the same tails and bunches, long,short, medium, uppydo and half uppydo and hat/hair but that depends on the designer lol, my excuse is I wasn't logged on at the time :P

xox Sasy xox

Felicity Blumenthal said...

Kit...I have thought about doing that as well, organizing the hair by updo, pony, etc. I really need to spend a week in busy mode to accomplish that kinda task! But organization is the word of the day! LOL

Nef....great minds think alike! =)

Sasy...LOL...tragic, how could you forget such a detaiL?? hehe

Emme Mannonen said...

I organize in somewhat the same way except now my inventory is in such a sorry state, I have to re-organize again and delete ALOT of stuff.

Great post! I love seeing how other people try to contain the madness that is their inventory.

Kit Maitland said...

Felicity...yah...I need to take a week to do the same...but I'm waiting until I get the request from LL to reduce my inv (yesh...a friend of a friend actually got such a request...but her inv was 6 figures at the time...)...haha.

It took me about a week to reorganize the hair...but along the way I did manage to drop over 2K in old hair from my inv!

Another tip...do a search for 'object'...if you're anything like me you'll be surprised how many things you'll get rid of. :P

Felicity Blumenthal said...

Emme, HEY! Good to *see* you. I think I am living under a rock. LOL...or lost in my inventory.

Kit...don't say such things.... I'd not know what to do if the LL police came after me and my clothes!!

Good point on the object.... gotta go do that now =)

Sasy Scarborough said...

omg hides more,also another one is to use the filters, only show notecards and lm's and use ctrl and left click and highlight them and trash them , some stores have 3 notecards per item , some stores put in every lm to all their satelite stores, I got rid of over a K of items just doing part of that once lol

Oh and REBOX hair colours you dont wear, don't get rid of them as such coz you never know, but definitely store them back into a box

xox Sasy xox

Felicity Blumenthal said...

Sasy...that is such an excellent Idea on the hair colors!! I hadn't even thought about that.

Thanks again everyone for your imput and ideas, and I sure do hope it is very helpful to all the readers! =)

Mj said...

Hi Felicity,
I did a post on an outfit i was wearing when i cleaned up my invent(thanks to you) i linked back to this page so more of us could read about all your fantastic advice hope thats ok...Thanks again :-)

Felicity Blumenthal said...

Yayy! I left you a post over there =)