Inventory Management - Cleanup

As I approach my first rez day I realize that almost everything I accumulated during my first 6 months in Second Life is rarely, if ever, used. The clothing I got mostly sucks. I've replaced the AO with a better, more sophisticated, unified AO/Dance Hud. Pretty much everything I use I've acquired in the last 6 months or more recently.

It's probably a pretty good bet that the average avatar could delete everything in their inventory over 6 months old and never miss a thing. Of course, I am not suggesting that but I would suggest a regular and thorough purge of all inventory items no longer useful. SL inventories, especially for us avid shoppers, grow quite rapidly.

My current inventory contains over 16,000 items and I would guess I may use or refer to less than 5% of that. I like to keep all my landmarks (organized hierarchically), many of my notecards (for reference), animations & gestures, etc. but regularly delete as much as I can. Honestly, I wish I were more ruthless in my inventory cleaning. If I were starting all over again I sure would not have picked up so many freebies but I guess it's all a part of the great big learning curve that never ends.

One other aspect of this inventory cleanup tip is to get a good backup system. Invest a little time and money into storage boxes of some sort. Offload as many intentory items as you can into an out-of-inventory storage system, preferably one that can be accessed out-of-world. I use the OD Inventory Management System but cannot really enthusiastically recommend it. The cost is a one-time L$2600 with no monthly fee and a web-based out-of-world access/search system that is pretty cool but the actual process of creating the boxes is tedious and error prone.

Other systems are available, most expensive and some with a monthly fee. The Bright Inventory Box and aptly named Inventory Box look like two less expensive alternatives that might suit most people's needs.