How do YOU keep track of your Sims?

Notepad and spreadsheet. Notepad for raw data like names and generation, spreadsheet for compiled/calculated data like how many males, females, occults, etc.

I have given each sim a tag in my blog and written info there. I also added some info in the plumbob app. My screenshots are organized by households/family lines and also by year don't know how to best explain it. But if a family lived in certain neighourhood (or another deciding factor) 2019-2021 then the folder name would start with those years.

I store all my screenshots on a usb. There they are all organized by month and year. I used Imgur and other photo sites but never know if one day they’ll just go blank

For rotating, I use two WordPad docs: one for the sims' stats (age, traits, career, likes/dislikes, etc.) and the other for little notes (i.e. "Bella is pregnant (pregnancy paused)", "Hire a butler for the Landraabs") and rotation info. The notes also has whether aging is on/off for a specific round and which rotation I'm on.

I tried spread sheets but I didn't like them as well. Plus, because I used Google docs, I always forgot to update them after a play session. With my method above, I can have both of those docs open on my second monitor and add to them as I go.

Okay, you're going to call me a crazy control freak, but that's fine, it's not like I don't already know...

I only really play one save, and to keep track of its population, I have a very big Excel file that lists all sims alphabetically by name, along with information about their gender, career, traits, etc. Here's an example, I split it in two screenshots to make it easier to read, but it's really one long row per sim.

https://abload.de/img/bonnie014xfvg.jpg

https://abload.de/img/bonnie020hio8.jpg

Explanation: Bonnie Bumblebee is a female human, young adult, lives in Brindleton Bay, is neither a celebrity nor a ghost, works as a an environmental manager, her traits are Childish, Geek, and Loves the Outdoors, no university degrees or club memberships at this time.

Since I play with ageing, free will and neighbourhood stories off, not much ever changes without my approval. When somebody does move, change jobs or occult status, I update their entry accordingly. Cats and dogs are also listed, but not small pets or farm animals. One thing I do not keep track of is aspirations and bonus traits because I change them on the fly. I also don't care about relationships, but there's a separate tab in this same file listing all the households and their members.

There's a reason I'm using numbers instead of X's or check marks for the species and gender entries. It's for the statistics at the bottom of the list. I only learned much later that Excel can also count words, not just numbers, which means this list could be a lot less bloated, but it is what it is now. And it will get even more bloated if my language (German) ever gets the pronoun update, because then I might add a third gender option. At the moment, sims with custom gender settings are categorised based on the pronoun the game uses for them.

The statistics also tell me how many sims and households live in each world (Newcrest is currently number one with 32 played residents, but San Myshuno has more households), and how many sims are in each age group (unsurprisingly, almost half of my played sims are young adults, and there are currently no toddlers in my world). Sooner or later I'll add career statistics as well because I'd like to see which ones I use the most.

Excel Spread sheet.
Simmimg moments thread:
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/918301/ck213s-ts4-favorite-simming-moments-the-bella-goth-chat-pg-21/p1

Photobucket broke image links to the first twelve pages, so I have to repair it.
Progress is slow.

I use a spiral bound notebook, and have a story (or 2) running on Carl's Forum.

I only have two saves at the moment and both of them are SimLit stories. I have a thread in Creative Corner for each one and I keep a notebook handy where I keep track of little things like book titles my novelist sim writes. Titles of movies and tv shows all my actress sims perform in and any other little tidbits my mind thinks might be important later on. I have a few thousand screenshots saved on my Imgur page too.

Do you have spreadsheets?
- Nope

Is your screenshot folder crammed? (If so, do you organize it and how??)

- I have folder for every potential story for example with Vlad Returns I have folders

and if its say new story idea


and obviously before any screens it all just lives in my head rent free :lol: I make memos sometimes on phone like " this and this happens to this sim at some point in time" " this sim meets that sim" "this happens before that" but i try to avoid doing too much of it since i have tendency to scheme too much

Do you have a forum thread?

- yeah I have the one in my signature where i throw links to all my story threads and related and then theres the actual story threads

I don’t keep written track at all. Even though I have a terrible memory for things that don’t interest me, I just keep the stories for my hundreds of sims in my head.