I haven’t been getting out much lately. The major reason is that I’ve been working on the store; when you’re building inventory, or rearranging things, or looking for the best rates for advertising, your time isn’t your own any more. RL businesspeople know that as much as successful SL business types. Today, however, I spent over two hours doing a task far too many of us scamp, to our grief –

Yes! I was cleaning Inventory!

In about every book I’ve read on Second Life, you are given a chapter on Inventory control, and you are urged most solemnly to keep a handle on your closet, so that you don’t get drowned in tons of stuff that you have no idea what it is. You’re warned that the larger the Inventory, the longer it takes to load, and you’re essentially walking around with a 500 kilo backpack on your shoulders if you don’t keep it trimmed down dramatically. And I realize these things with my librarian’s training. But I’m not as good as I should be. The Inventory swells, it gets messy, I lose stuff I’ve just bought or built, and it gets to be a headache after a while. So I make myself dig into the sucker every month or so — it should be far more often! — and trim it.

Oh; how much do I have in my own closet? After today’s session, approximately 6,100 items. Allow me to break here while all your jaws drop at the smallness. And now I hear yelps from some of the long-term residents and compulsive shoppers, “Only 6,100??? I’m walking around with 11,000, (15,000) (30,000) (insert your own figure) items, and you have only 6k?!? How do you do it??”

Simple. When you get into this mode, you have to be (a) ruthless, and (b) a compulsive storer.

You like certain colors or styles of hair, but you’re awash in sale fatpacks? Pick out the ones you wear all the time and like the most, and stuff the rest into labeled storage prims. (Labeling is absolutely important, and I can’t emphasize it enough. Since you can’t drag folders into a prim, you must label them to keep straight what stuff you’re stuffing in, and to find that prim later. If you have scads of prims named “Object,” you’ll be even more lost than you were before.) You think you’re still going to wear that purple wig with pink polka dots that you’ve never pulled out of the folder before? That’s fine; as long as it’s in that prim and you don’t delete the prim, you have it. You just have to pull it out when you need it. Stuff it in!! Do this with all those fatpacks: hair, dresses, candles, whatever. And remember: label them, every mother’s son!!

Doing this — and, of course, deleting out the copyable originals that didn’t self-delete on the move into the prims — you’ll probably regain 80-90% of the space you’re eating up right now with all those scads of stuff. Do you want to get back even more? Go to one of the merchants that sell organizers, such as THiNC. I use their organizer boxes, which can hold at least 100 items per box, and scripted to let you scroll through and find what you’re looking for. You could just stuff your unprimmed stuff in one of these, but you’ll maximize your storage if you prim those 50-shade fatpacks up first. Oh, and remember that, if even one of the items in your storage box is no copy privileges, your box will not copy either. And if you delete it accidentally, you’d better reach into the trash and restore it soon, before you forget. Or else the consequences will be beyond (virtually) catastrophic!

Once you’re certain everything’s where it should be, the last step is to empty the trash. There, and BOY! That backpack sure feels lighter, doesn’t it? The Inventory opens up faster, you can find things easier, and you have a great opportunity to exercise the Carlin option now: go out and buy more stuff!