gone baby gone…
My friends, I did something hardcore. I mean, REALLY crazy…
My whole SL is gone. I have deleted my WHOLE inventory, including everything I had built from start, customs, etc. I only kept the clothes I was wearing at the time, my AIF dogs and a few skins, and of course as many !BF! originals as possible so I can continue to sell them.
BYE BYE INVENTORY
Thousands and thousands of dollars worth… I was like a SL museum, I had everything from 2005. It was so precious and very dear to me.
BUT! I had NEVER cleaned it once, and so I was now over 170K of cluttered items in no particular order. It was dragging me down, slowing my viewer and making me mad each minute.Sometimes starting fresh is scary. But I hope this will maybe revive my SL apetite once and for all, this on and off hiatus of mine feeling awkward, and all the bugs and crashing and blah blah…
I wanted to share that with you all, not so that I have your pity or anything, not to make a shock, I just thought I’d say a word on my process, where I am in my life right now, RL vs SL, what will happen with elka, etc. Just like that.
I recall a conversation I had with elka Lehane years ago, and she said that she had never deleted a single thing from her inventory. My jaw dropped. She kept everything that landed in her inventory, and ended up with 170K of items and clutter.
When I read elka’s message on Flickr about her deleting her entire inventory, at first I was shocked, but at the same time, I really admire her for taking such a drastic step to clean up her inventory and increase her SL performance drastically.
We’ve all heard about how having a large inventory may slow performance, and according to Linden Lab, anything over 10,000 objects is considered extremely large. My inventory hasn’t been 10,000 since my first six months in SL. Can a fashion addict/content creator keep their invy under 10K?
Before elka deleted her inventory, she couldn’t even keep shadows on for very long without crashing. I asked her if her performance is better now, and she said that she can keep shadows on all the time now, without crashing, and even in laggy sims.
I’m so inspired by this, I need to put more efforts into taking my 90K inventory down to below 50K. I’ve been cleaning my inventory since December 2010, and only managed to reduce it from 130K to 90K, but I think I need to move a lil faster, and be a lot more ruthless. I may or may not pull an elka!
About Post Author
Here are a few parts of our conversation:
“Aww <3 Sweet pie!! Thanks for mentionning my little post, I think even without my move you could have still talked about it, but I do hope as I said your your major influence + my real story it might help people realize it's true! Not entirely LL's fault!"
"Because it's a serious thing, I cried for 48 hours, pressing delete, delete, delete… But now I feel light, fresh, free LOL! No kidding!"
So anyways guys I just wanted to confirm a few things and thank Gogo for sharing my story: IT WORKS!
I deleted everything. Every. Single. Pixel. Bought a new graphic card. Here I am. I can turn on shadows, and I can KEEP THEM ON while shopping, or in laggy situations like fairs or gridwide hunts. Serious.
Try it <3
Big post ahead. And sorry for the frenglish here and there, I’m not 100% bilingual. 😉
Decluttering is VERY important in SL, not only for lag but simply because we really don’t use all that much. No need to keep everything. Clothes, hair, skins, house furniture? Usually after a few months (if not a few weeks) we are over the things we loved and moved to something new.
I clean my Inventory every day from the basics : landmarks, notecards, pictures, textures, objects such as boxed items, etc. I usually take the last 10 minutes of my day to do so, while I say goodnight to my friends. It’s part of my SL routine, and it’s quite easy and quick.
I sort everything into folders and I delete the extra stuff as I go : promotional notecards and landmarks from every purchase take lots of space. I *clean* every new folder I get when I purchase something. This way I don’t have 25 landmarks of the same store.
Every week I go over my clothes & body items to delete what I’ve purchased since the last decluttering and I delete what I got but don’t like much, and won’t wear again. If I’m not sure about an item, I put it on and wear it for at least another day… and then I decide to keep or throw away.
And 4 times per year, when I change the *seasonal* stuff on my land, I go over my whole inventory and wear or rezz every inventory I own, and delete what I haven’t used since the last seasonal cleaning, minus some exceptions.
I shall say that I very rarely purchase fatpack (minus skins) so it helps, indeed. But from fatpack I delete the colors I don’t wear and keep only the stuff I use.
Also, I sort everything, which helps A LOT. I know what I have and where it is. And I know what I need and don’t. It takes a good discipline but I have a HUGE clothes and body inventory, yet I’m around 11,000 items. I’m 2 years old. As a reference, my old avatar lived only 16 months, she has less personal items (clothes & body) yet her inventory is around 80,000. I never really decluttered anything under her, I was a bit lazy. LOL
I’m not saying this is the ultimate way to go and your answer to all your Inventory problems, but I hope I helped a bit!
Very interesting post, indeed!
I keep saying I will delete. I haven’t deleted yet. I’m afraid I’ll delete something then need it later. I’m a SL hoarder.
I can’t imagine deleting nearly all the contents of my Inventory. It represents real money that I’m not willing to sacrifice to the pixel gods just yet. However, I do belong to the school of thought that says a smaller, organized Inventory is better. At 16k, my Inventory is large by LL’s standards, but it’s very organized and as long as it’s under 20k and my performance is good, I’m happy.
Some of the ways in which I keep my Inventory low are:
— notecarding Landmarks
— boxing seasonal items
— deleting scripts, extra pose stands, and notecards
— only buy what I love
— only keep what I love, what I will wear, and what fits well
Notecarding landmarks is actually a very good idea, knowing I keep hundreds of those! And it would be so easy to organize…
Well now I know what I’m doing today. LOL!
i am down from 110 to 70k, and still shadow doesn’t perform well and the rezz issues are still there. So maybe 50k does it, but i doubt it. My alt with 10k has no problems, my other alt with 30k already has trouble …
I never let my inventory go over 30k and I am 3.5 years in SL. I have an extensive skin/hair/clothing/shoes wardrobe.I am now trying to get it down to 25k max. I don’t know if I could delete everything though..a brave move 🙂
I’ve been cleaning mine since December as well and I’m trying to get to 10k, but currently stalled at 19…It is difficult to rid ourselves of the things we have found to be such a treasure..be it pictures, clothes, shoes, hair, even notecards. I am not quite as brave as Ms Elka, but little by little I’m getting there. If only I would stop buying new things. Good Luck Miss Gogo!
<3
NCing landmarks! That is brilliant! This post has inspired me to do some major organizing! 🙂
omg u could have just dragged all the stuff into prims’ contents and stored them somewhere D:
i never let my inventory get over 6k ,when it does i put all the old stuff in a prim for later use if i need them
Why would I, really. In the end, it’s not stuff I will want to use ever again. And the paaaain to go through these boxes if I ever wanted something!!!! No I insist (to me anyways) this was the best idea ever. Harsh, but effective!! 😀
Did you really do that? omg!!
I was shocked!!
i had to reread this post thrice!!
omg!…so many clothes..so many shoes..so many hairs…omg….
:(:(:( couldnt you have sent the transferrable to me? :'(
oh dear..i hope u didnt delete any mon tissu outfits..omg Gogo…..
im going to start cleaning!:)
Gogo didn’t. I did 🙂 She was simply stating me as an exemple LOL!
i am not quite a shopoholic but i do have many random weird things in my inventory that ppl have given me and many landmarks and now my inventory is around 16K…so I guess I will start to organize as well as much as I dread it iI am crashing a lot and have been avoiding the real reason why…hahaha!
Great post! I love the notecard for landmarks! It made me think…could we notecard pictures as well?
That would help me ALOT Im a shopper and a snapshotteraholic..lol
:o)
I recently started a 6 month rule for my inventory that I have for my RL.
Except for seasonal things (eg: christmas, easter), I put something I’ve not noticed wearing (like my old DeLa jeans) into a box marked ‘6 month rule: DeLa jeans’. If I haven’t accessed those jeans in 6 months, its bubbai jeans!
Works a treat for things you *think* you’ll use again, but end up not using. And in the interim, your inventory is smaller because things are in boxes, not folders full of things!
I’m currently cutting down from 25k to 15k (am at 19,233 as I speak :D) I cull often, though. And I don’t get stuff sent to me coz I don’t blog ! lol
Elka, you’re incredibly brave. It must feel liberating though.
Four months ago I tore down everything on my sim to re-landscape. Since then I’ve done little but shop for new ‘things’ I don’t need. I CAN live on a 512 parcel in a skybox, but I love a huge garden.
I need to take a break from shopping and start clearing.
In the past I’ve deleted landmarks, notecards, images sent with notecards – and approx 20k items disappeared after a crash, never to return – but the task of sorting through the remaining 90k worth of clothes/hair/shoes/gifts/ephemera is SO daunting. Very little of my inventory is sorted into folders, so I easily lose track of recent purchases and find them accidentally, months later.
I have gifts from hunts in 2007/2008 that haven’t been opened – they can go. But I could never delete everything.
It’s not just the cost, it’s sentimental value and beauty of some of the things I own.
It’s my 4th Rez Day in a couple of weeks – I’ll spend my time until then culling and sorting.
Enclosed is a link to a picture of *some* of my inventory, taken in Oct 2008. (BTW, I’m still open to your offer, Gogo 🙂
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eurydicebarzane/2933908385/in/photostream
I really need to get more disciplined when it comes to my inventory. I’m already over 30k, and I can remember before December it was just over 20k. It’s nuts, I tell ya. I don’t want to have to like delete everything…just trim a little bit 🙂
I’m going to clean up my inventory now too. It’s over 70k (and I’m 5 years old!) but I still have notecards and landmarks since my first day in SL. I love nostalgia but I don’t need these any longer.
Same with freebies and clothes. I don’t know why I keep half this stuff. I think I’m just lazy!
I’m at 211k and counting, and thats after deleting all my LMs, most of my notecards, any demos etc I may have had and so forth.
OMG! I think we have a winner – congratulations Ayami!
pftt! i have 3k haahahahahaahhaaha 😀 and im on my 3rd year of sl