Hi, peeps! I hope 2012 is treating you well, both IRL and in SL, and I want to ask you a question:

Are you sorting?

“Huh?” I hear you mutter. “Sorting what?”

Why, your inventory, of course! Didn’t you make that New Year’s Resolution to finally get a decent filing system going and to ditch all those newbie things you grabbed in your first days in-world? And what about that promise you made to yourself to keep on top of trashing all the extra stuff that comes with each retail therapy/lucky chair-hopping/freebie-nobbling spree?

Hrm. *narrows eyes* I think we could all do with a reminder, don’t you? I know I’m doing my best to keep on top of stuff, but there are days when I literally only have two minutes to run in-world, accept any inventory offers, pay my rent (the important bit that I’m actually going in-world for!), and then get offline again. Those hastily-accepted inventory offers then sit in my Objects folder, un-opened and unloved :(

Today I had more time to spend in-world, and on a half hour jaunt around the grid wherein I spent a few L$, meandered around The Free Dove to take a look at their new items, and won a fair few items on lucky boards, I ended up with a decent haul of stuff in my Recent Items tab. So, as I promised I would do, I sat down to sort it. And boy, did it make a difference.

Hop behind the cut!

Here is today’s Pile o’Stuff:

All of that needs to be tried-on, blogged (if I can put together a couple of great looks from it), and then sorted into the relevant folders in my inventory. But before I do any of that, I’m going to show filters and weed out some extraneous stuff. In short, I’m gonna SORT!

On older, V1-based viewers (such as Phoenix), show filters can be found at the top of your inventory window, under File > Show Filters:

In newer, V2 and V3-based viewers (such as the official Linden Lab viewers, Firestorm, etc) you’ll find it in the little ‘cog’ symbol at the bottom of your inventory window, under Show Filters:

Once you have your filters window up, click the ‘none’ button, and then just check the following: landmarks, notecards, and scripts, like this:

  

Now you can select all of those duplicate items and send them straight to trash. If you need to remember that an item is texture-change or resizable, now is the time to come up with your own code for those things. Perhaps, for texture change items, you can append ‘TC’ to the end of the folder name, and for resize items you can append ‘RZ’. Once you’ve done, click the ‘all’ button on the filters window, to bring all your inventory back into view.

One other thing I forgot to check for in this initial weeding-out session was posing stands, so make sure you run a search (without filters set) for ‘pose’ and ‘posing’ (you might also want to search for ‘adjust’, as some creators call them Adjustment Stands). Remember, you only need one pose stand!

Once you’ve got rid of those duplicates it’s time to empty trash, but before you do that make a note of how many items you have in total in your inventory, then – once you’ve emptied your trash – make a note of how many items again, and subtract that from your first number to find out just how many you threw out.

From this little lot today, Mar threw out 105 duplicate and unwanted items, and here’s a massive screencap of them all!

Now you can see how easily the rubbish in your inventory can mount up, when just one half hour session in-world can add this much junk to it! Make that resolution now, if you haven’t already. Sort it when you get it, as much as you possibly can. Delete all the junk, and file stuff away. If you want to remember what you bought and when, or if you don’t have time to file it right this minute, make a quick ‘Purchases [today’s date]’ folder in your main inventory and drag all the new stuff in there. You can get to it when you have more time.