Are any of you wise in the ways of SL inv mgmt tools? My goal would be decluttering stuff that I don't expect to use much but also don't want to delete. Mostly, my questions are about single points of failure. Does my stuff go poof if one critically important container disappears from my inventory? Am I dependent on the seller staying in business?
I don't use fancy tools, I just have a regular (daily) boxing regimen. And yes, the downside is that if you put 100 things in a box, and that box goes poof, all 100 of those items are gone. There are ways to minimize the damage of that, however.
(1) This is most likely to happen if/when the box is rezzed out, so keep it in your inventory when you aren't managing it.
(2) Copyable items rarely go poof, so if you can, avoid putting a no-copy item in a box that otherwise contains copy items. A no-copy item will make the entire box no-copy and increase the likelihood of poofing.
(2) Copyable items rarely go poof, so if you can, avoid putting a no-copy item in a box that otherwise contains copy items. A no-copy item will make the entire box no-copy and increase the likelihood of poofing.
(3) Use many boxes. My storage system goes by month, and since I'm fourteen years old in SL, that means I have over 160 storage boxes by now. That sounds like a lot, but they contain tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of total items, so it's still a great reduction in inventory content.
(3a) Out of those 160+ boxes, I've only lost one, and I can't swear it wasn't user error.
Thanks 
Of course, if you were thinking about using specially designed inventory management products, someone else may be able to weigh in. I don't know anything about them, but I know some people have tools they're fans of!
Any inventory tool or method has to convince me that I'll say "wow performance has increased a lot" or "wow it's so much easier to find stuff" or "wow my inventory is much safer now." Also: "wow that didn't take long." Odds are, I'll wind up with the same technique I've used in the past: Organize by folder and let stuff accumulate.
But I thought I'd ask. Thanks for the tips!