How to Clean Up Your Second Life Inventory: Ryan’s Tips and Tricks for Inventory Management, Organizing, and Weeding

While some older, system-layers-and-flexiprims outfits like this wonderful Faerie Queen Valentine Outfit from Fancy Fairy are still holding up very well after more than a decade, you will probably stiill want to weed out most of the older, pre-mesh items in your inventory which you never wear, especially if you created a Second Life account prior to 2011!

Well, after pillaging all the Advent and 12 Days of Christmas calendars I could find during the month of December, it’s time to take on a task which I absolutely dread: cleaning and organizing the inventory of my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair.

I created Vanity Fair on March 14th, 2008 and—although I did not plan it!—she has become my main Second Life avatar. As I have written:

If anybody had told me, at the start of my 14-year Second Life journey, that my main avatar (the one I use the most) would be a woman, I would have laughed my damn head off. It would have never even occurred to me that I could be a woman. When I started off, I created an avatar that, more or less, looked like me, dressed like me…was me. 

Vanity is the avatar I trotted out regularly over the intervening years, to snag the latest group gifts and store freebies, as well as vacuum up all the free presents left out at countless Second Life shopping events. As a result, at one point her inventory ballooned to almost 269,000 items! I noticed that, once my inventory size hit a quarter of a million elements, that it negatively impacted my overall Second Life experience overall (it was particularly noticeable when I logged out of SL, where I encountered a significant delay before Firestorm shut down).

Here are the four main things I did to try and get this mess under some semblance of control:

  • 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.

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 (but be careful you don’t delete WEARABLE demos, such as the wearable hair colour demos at Elikatira Hair!)
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!

INVENTORY SEARCH TIP: Did you know that you can search for more than one keyword at a time when searching your Second Life inventory? Just put a plus sign between each term! For example, if you are searching for brown hairbases, enter “brown+hairbase”. This will pull up any items which include BOTH the word “brown” AND the word “hairbase”, IN ANY ORDER! I can’t believe I spent my first twelve years in Second Life not knowing about this wonderful hack!

First, before we start, a definition of a Second Life term: elements refers to the total number of items and subfolders in any folder (more information here if you use Firestorm). There is a total count of all the elements in your entire SL inventory at the very bottom of your Inventory window (please see image A below):

Here’s how I was able to filter my inventory to find and weed out the oldest items in my inventory, step by step:

Image A
  1. You’ll probably want to load up a classic, system avatar if you are trying on system-layers-and-flexiprims outfits (in these pictures, Vanity is wearing her Catwa Kimberly mesh head and Slink mesh hands, but the rest is a system avatar). If you don’t have much inventory before 2011, when mesh clothing was introduced, you can skip this step.
  2. Open your inventory, click on the little gear icon at the bottom left of your Inventory display window, and set your folder sort settings as follows (see image A). I find this useful, because it sorts the system folders to the top, to get them out of your way, and the rest of the folders are sorted in strict alphabetical order, which makes it very easy to see if you have duplicate folders!
  3. Then, to focus on the oldest items in your inventory, click on Show Filters and select the types of items you want to filter by (for example, just objects or just notecards). Also, at the very bottom of the Show Filters window, click on the button next to “Older Than”, and then enter a figure in the Days box (I used 4000.00 to filter my inventory to only show me those elements which were older than 4,000 days, which works out to about 10.9 years). Pick a value you’re comfortable with, where you’re pretty sure anything older than that is stuff you probably don’t want! (Please see the red arrows on image B below.)
  4. Find a quiet sandbox somewhere (if you are a premium member, I recommend using a sandbox for premium members; just search for “Premium” under Places and you should find a few good candidates in the first page of your search results).
  5. Then, go through your inventory starting from the A’s, working your way down to the Z’s, trying on outfits you don’t remember. For example, the following black Havana outfit was instantly sent to the pixelbin (see image B below). Keep a pen and paper handy to note where you stop, otherwise you’ll forget how far you got when you restart your task!
  6. Use an inventory box system to bundle together items which you don’t use very often, but which you cannot bear to part with! I use the Bright inventory box system, but there are numerous other products on the market which work just as well. Doing this significantly reduces the number of elements in your inventory, since hundreds and hundreds of items now count as only one element!
  7. Finally, don’t forget to click the little gear button at the bottom left of your Inventory window, and click on Empty Trash to remove the deleted items from your Second Life inventory permanently (see image C below). It’s such a satisfying feeling to see your total count go down as a result (give your SL client a moment to refresh the count, though).
Image B
Image C

INVENTORY CLEANING TIP: Hit Ctrl+P to open your Preferences window in your SL client, click on the General tab, and make the following selections indicated by the green arrows in the diagram below in order to display the ARC (Avatar Rendering Complexity) figure above your avatar’s head (see also image B above):

This is a very quick and handy way to see if any older, prim-heavy jewelry, sculpted hairstyles, or other objects you are wearing are significantly increasing your avatar rendering complexity! For example, I have a beautiful ballgown with three flexiprim skirt add-ons, and the flexiprims alone send my ARC soaring into the stratosphere!

If you choose to wear such an outfit (and frankly, sometimes I still do love to wear this gown), then you should be aware that you will render as a “jellydoll” in most other people’s Second Life viewers. Read up on this and related matters on the Firestorm wiki (if you use the Firestorm viewer, which most people do). So don’t expect other avatars to be able to see you properly in-world!

If the folder has an image, hooray! These pictures can often save you valuable time when you are weeding through your inventory! Open the image to see if it shows you what the outfit looks like. No need to wear it to check it out! The following outfit (shudder!) obviously did NOT make the final cut (God, I hope it was a freebie! I would hate to think I spent actual money on this monstrosity!!!)

The 8th and final step: Don’t forget to reset your inventory filters after your marathon cleaning session! Just click the gear icon in the bottom left corner of your Inventory window, click on Show Filters, and then click on the Reset button at the very bottom of the panel. Otherwise, you’ll get confused when you try to search for items you know are still in your inventory!

ONE FINAL INVENTORY MANGEMENT TIP: if you ruthlessly organize, categorize, label, and weed your inventory as you pick up items (e.g. deleting fits for brands of mesh bodies you never plan to own), then you won’t need to spend as much time on marathon inventory cleanup sessions! 😉

Finally, if you are looking for good advice on how to organize your Second Life inventory so it does NOT land up in the state Vanity Fair’s is, Google is your friend. Do a search for “second life inventory management” and you’ll find tips, tricks and tools!

Editorial: Staying Off Social Media and the News Media for the Next Little While as a Self-Care Activity

In the inevitable hand-wringing political thread over on the official Second Life community forums, I wrote:

I have decided that this is the perfect time to stay off all social media and all news media for a few days, BREATHE, and focus on cleaning through Vanity Fair’s overstuffed inventory. So far I have thrown out about 30,000 items. 

On top of everything else, my location has just enacted an emergency, code-red coronavirus pandemic lockdown. I believe the ancient Chinese curse goes something along the lines of “may you live in interesting times”. I am awaiting the locusts.

As a Canadian, I have absolutely ZERO control over that happens in the three-ring circus currently taking place south of the border, and frankly, checking my social media and news media regularly to see what’s going on is doing nothing but increasing my anxiety and triggering my despair and depression. Enough.

So I continue with my task of cleaning up Vanity’s oldest inventory items, all the while coming across such lovely vintage items as this beautiful system-layers-and-flexiprims outfit by Fancy Fairy, which I had completely forgotten I owned:

Faerie Queen Valentine Outfit from Fancy Fairy (includes the wings):
still holding up very well after more than a decade!

The Fancy Fairy store has since left the Second Life grid, but you can still browse through all the lovely merchandise available in their SL Marketplace store. Remember, there’s still a place for older, high-quality system-layer-and-flexiprim apparel in your Second Life wardrobe, with the added benefit that they are often reduced in price! For example, you can pick up a very similar fairy outfit for only L$100.

Stay strong, stay healthy, and stay sane in these trying times! May you find escape, solace, and flow pursuing the hobbies and pastimes which make you happy, and visiting with friends in your preferred social VR platform or virtual world. It’s not wrong to take time for yourself to safe-guard your mental health in these crazy-making times.

Editorial: In the Wee, Small Hours

As I write this, it is a cold (-9°C/16°F) 4:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning, November 1st, here in Winnipeg. I am exhausted—emotionally, mentally, and physically—and yet I am unable to find comfort in sleep. Tossing and turning, I finally give up and go to my computer.

Some people use their insomnia to read or meditate, or perhaps play a game of solitaire. Me, I do what I usually do when I can’t sleep: I turn on CalmRadio.com to the Spa stream of soothing music, load up my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair, and continue to weed through the very oldest items in her voluminous, 241,601-item inventory, trying on and deciding whether to keep decade-old apparel, footwear, and accessories, or throwing the items away, knowing I’ll never, ever wear them again.

I’m currently in the F’s, trying on all the 10, 11, and 12-year-old FallnAngel freebies I picked up at various hunts (and throwing almost all of them into the pixel recycling bin).
Now, on the other hand, I think I will hold on to this beautiful system-layers-and-flexiprims kimono by FallnAngel…

And aaaaah, yes, the irony does not escape me that I, infamously relaxed housekeeper that I am (“slob” is such an ugly word), that I am spending the wee hours of my morning cleaning and organizing Vanity’s virtual wardrobe, while a large pile of Ryan’s real-life unfolded and un-put-away laundry sits next to his bed, his unironed dress shirts are hanging from his exercise cycle, and several towers of dirty dishes and unwashed pots rest on his kitchen counters and in his sink, just waiting to be loaded into my dishwasher.

Why do I do this? Why do I make these choices?

Well, Second Life is one of those hobbies which occupies my time, generates a flow state, and makes me feel happy, and I need to find those happy places wherever I can find them lately, in these distressing and disorienting times. When I clean my apartment, fold my laundry or load my dishwasher, my mind tends to wander, and I tend to get stuck in a dark cloud of anxiety, despair, or depression, despite my best efforts and intentions. Achieving a flow state, or a good mood, is something that I have decided that I want to maintain as a priority, so if something makes me feel good (or at least, feel better), I tend to do that first.

This is how I am choosing to cope during the coronavirus pandemic, and I am not going to beat myself up if I happen to have a pile of dirty dishes on the kitchen counter or dust bunnies hanging out in the corner of my bathroom. I am the one and only person around, and I will simply get to it when I get to it. If, at the end of my day, I have not disappeared into the black pit of depression, then I consider that day a success, regardless of how many crumbs lie under my kitchen table or how many dirty pots sit in my sink. I am choosing to focus on my mood, and to forgive myself for any misplaced priorities.

As you might know, the circumstances of my life and my career have unfortunately forced me to put the RyanSchultz.com blog on the back burner these past three months, while I attended to other projects, problems, worries, and crises, but it is now November 1st, 2020, and I am happy to say that I have successfully navigated through the huge pile of work that I have had to do, and met all the deadlines that I have had to meet.

I now have a blessed (and believe me, very much-needed) two-week vacation from my full-time paying job with my university library system. And I intend to use that time, not just to do a little housecleaning in Second Life and in real life, but also to attend to the somewhat neglected RyanSchultz.com blog.

Stay tuned for further announcements as I ponder and plan my next steps for the blog. The past three years have been an unexpected but wonderful adventure, and I cannot wait to see what the next three years will bring!

Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash

UPDATE 11:56 a.m. Well, after a good long sleep, I have finally loaded up my dishwasher with the first load of the day, and I am back at cleaning up my inventory.

This being the day after Hallowe’en, I leave you with yet another wonderful blast from the past from Vanity Fair’s ancient inventory that’s a definite keeper: this gothic Carmen-Miranada-esque Hallowe’en outfit from Comme Il Faut, complete with hat, hair, shoes, jewelry, and skull maracas! The only modern aspects of this avatar are my signature Catwa Kimberly head and Slink hands; everything else is system-layer clothing, prims, and flexiprims on a classic avatar. The outfit still holds up perfectly well after more than a decade.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Carmen-1.jpg
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Carmen-2.jpg

UPDATED! Second Life: A Few Blasts from the Past (and Vanity Fair Takes a Trip Down Memory Lane)

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!