This week, I have been working on cleaning up and boxing up Vanity Fair’s overstuffed inventory. I am happy to report that by this evening, I have already taken it from 268,957 elements down to 244,034 elements (roughly the size it was a year ago), by doing the following:
- Ruthlessly pruning my landmarks down from hundreds and hundreds to less than ten;
- Searching for certain keywords (see list below) and deleting such things as demo versions of outfits, notecards, and unpacking scripts;
- Deleting tons of old system-layer-and-flexiprim outfits; and
- Boxing up items that I am unlikely to wear again, but cannot bear to part with.
For a couple of years, Vanity was a mannequin/model for Lemania Indigo Designs, work for which she got paid in free outfits. I have fond memories of certain outfits I wore, so I boxed everything up in a Bright inventory box (L$600 on the SL Marketplace) instead of deleting it, replacing well over 600 items with one item.
A friend gave me the following list of keywords to search in your inventory, in an effort to pinpoint those items which could easily be deleted, which I will share with you now:
Words to delete unwanted items from your inventory
UNPACK
HOLD (but be careful that this isn’t for a purse or a pet!)
DEMO
THANK YOU
REMOVE
READ
IMPORTANT
INFO
INFORMATION
INSTRUCTIONS
HOW TO
OBJECT
DELETE ME
LICENSE
BAG
GIVE
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT
GROUP
INVITE
POLICY
FAQ
INVITATION
INVITE
TOS
Hopefully, you will find this list as useful as I did. Remember to never do a mass delete until you have made sure of what you are getting rid of, though! Every so often, stop and check through the Trash folder in your inventory that you really want to get rid of the items in it, then right click on the Trash folder and select Empty Trash to purge it forever. I was surprised at how satisfying it was to get rid of old outfits!
(Please note that these items Vanity is modeling below are no longer available for sale, even if the store is still around after all these years. Most SL content creators have moved on from designing for classic, system avatars, choosing to create for the more modern, mesh avatar bodies.)
My inventory cleaning also turned into a rather unexpected trip down memory lane, as I tried on a few outfits I haven’t worn in over a decade! For example, except for the mesh hands (Slink), mesh head (Catwa Kimberly), and mesh hair (Dasha by Truth Hair), everything else you see in this outfit is at least 12 or 13 years old!
This beautiful dress with the flexiprim skirt is by AlaFolie, a store that is still up and running on the grid! It’s so well textured that it still quite wearable. The gold bangles were a gift from BLANG!!, a jewelry store which is long gone, and while they are prim-based, they don’t add too much to my overall avatar rendering complexity, so I kept them.
And the shoes are the Chloe sculpted flats for system feet by Lassitude & Ennui, a store which still exists today. By the way, if you are still rocking classic, system avatar feet, the very best place to get shoes in Second Life is Lindy’s Modern and Retro Shoes; they still have a marvelous selection of shoes for classic feet at a time when most shoe stores have moved completely to footwear designed to fit the various brands of mesh feet (in the case of women, Maitreya, Belleza, Slink and Legacy).
Now here’s a business outfit by Blaze (anybody remember them?), in which everything you see, except the hands, head, hair, and briefcase, is well over a decade old:
Note the expert texturing on the jacket, which makes outfit this a keeper, despite its age!
The outfit is the Women’s Power Suit by Blaze (which shut down years and years ago), and the Aree black pumps are an early purchase from Baby Monkey (a store which is still around). The shoes needed a shoe alpha to replace the outdated invisiprim (you can pick up a set for free here), but they are still quite servicable for classic, system feet!
This wonderfully detailed briefcase comes in three colours, and with a Bento hold pose as shown; it is a free group gift from SpotCat (it costs L$100 to join their group). And the perfect finishing touch are these pearl earrings and necklace by Dark Mouse, a store which has long since left the grid. In fact, you’d be surprised how much older jewelry is still wearable and usable with newer, mesh outfits (provided it’s not going to increase your avatar rendering complexity to over 100,000, that is).
So thanks for bearing with me on my trip down memory lane! I will continue to dig through my oldest inventory items, deleting, cleaning up, and boxing up items over the next few months as I find time.
In these pictures, Vanity Fair is wearing:
- the Kimberly Catwa Bento mesh head
- Slink female Bento mesh hands
- a classic, system body (no mesh body today!)
- Daria skin and skin appliers by The Skinnery
- Dasha hair by Truth Hair
- and my favourite forest green Darcey eyes by Suicidal Unborn
UPDATE Nov. 1st, 2020: Here’s another wonderful blast from the past that’s a keeper: this gothic Carmen-Miranada-esque Hallowe’en outfit from Comme Il Faut, complete with skull maracas! It still holds up perfectly after more than a decade!
