How do YOU keep track of your Sims?

I have a spreadsheet to keep track of the households and which season to play which house next. So if I played a family in spring on the 1st rotation I would have them in summer the next.

Then I have a PowerPoint doc for each household. This contains a pic and facts about each sim in the household and then division slides for each season with a short piece detailing what happened in that season followed by screenshots.

I also make fancier slides for special events, eg for a wedding I would do something that looks kind of like an invitation with the location and guest list detailed on it.

I don't keep track of anything, at least not in a spreadsheet or some other means outside of the game. I play with aging off and neighbourhood stories progression off and play them in random rotation and my game is rather slow paced. I remember all their stories because I've played them a lot. For achievements I keep some of the rewards and collections and incorporate them into their home decor, for memories they take pictures. My screenshots folder is crammed and organized chronologically, last picture at the top. Any one of my sims can be drafted to help test out my builds or set up a shop so there may be some minor diversions from their main story but I treat those as vacations or side interests.

A stuffed screenshot folder, labeled Foto stories, organized by game save number and sim/household under that. Many shots are captioned so it works like a graphic novel. Only spreadsheet is for the assorted packs so know what is on which machine. Otherwise, just assorted note scraps kept in a folder, though some were in a notebook.

For Sims 2, I would write down families that I made. Nothing super detailed, just the name and gender of the Sim, and what hair and eye color I gave them.
I referenced that when I made a save file to redo some of them for Sims 4.
Now, I just get an idea, and wing it, and don't really keep track of them.

"Rouensims;c-18272151" wrote:
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.

Oops! I just remembered I had a family tree in Family Echo for my crazy Keene-Friend family, which has like 100 second cousins and such!

Everyone's method of record keeping is impressive!

It's pretty easy for me. I only have one main family so it's not difficult at all to keep track of them. My one family is completing all the aspirations, careers, traits, etc and I document it all in a thread in Creative Corner.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1005742/my-super-sim-family-challenge/p1

Each family member has an introductory post with all their traits, completed aspirations, careers, degrees, clubs, skills, and owned businesses. Although the businesses are owned by the entire family I'll list it under the family member who operates it. I update when another achievement is completed.

The only records I keep are the posts I make in the What Happened in Your Game today read. Once a save gets big and unwieldy, I do another one. The only time I've made an album for Sims photos was when I did a self-Sim to start The Sims 2, and I followed his large family until the neighborhood was corrupted. I can still remember "my" grandchildren's names -- some of them, anyway.

I keep pretty extensive 'notes', I guess.

First of all, the spreadsheet. I have an aging spreadsheet. I keep every single member of my family in that spreadsheet. I track what age stage they are in, how old in years, when they're supposed to age up (and age them up accordingly, because the game likes to wait two more days), what date a sim died, cause of death, what life state they are, romantic orientation, gender... Next to that, I have a bunch of charts and tables so I can see the big numbers at a glance.

It basically looks like this:

https://i.ibb.co/Hgq5b2M/afbeelding-2023-06-07-130752547.png

https://i.ibb.co/q708kvs/afbeelding-2023-06-07-131106470.png

https://i.ibb.co/Nss3k2G/afbeelding-2023-06-07-131046071.png

Next to my spreadsheet, I use the Plum Tree App to keep track of my whole family tree. I play a Not So Berry challenge, so I put the challenge objectives and accomplishments in the bio there.

Overview:

https://i.ibb.co/jTYkFKL/afbeelding-2023-06-07-131338126.png

If you want to look at it in-depth:

https://www.theplumtreeapp.com/public/5ce66907bd39c600069627cb

I also track the family branch I play in a family tree on Miro for a prettier overview:

https://i.ibb.co/ynFkdt6/afbeelding-2023-06-07-131607551.png

My Sims screenshots I sort by generation. I rotate through some different families and I know where to go next by looking at my screenshots. The ones I've played the longest ago will have older screenshots. I post my screenshots with my story on Twitter with a hashtag and on Tumblr with multiple tags.

I’m old school. In my main rotational save which is pretty big, I have an index card for each of my sims with their traits ( I used to jeep track of skill levels, friends etc. but that got too time consuming to keep changing skills and friends ). I keep my index cards with families paper clipped together and have a recipe organizer where I can further organize each family by the world they live in. Much of the other information is keep in my head. I feel so close to my sims and keep aging off most of the time. Their characters are in my head as to who they are and what their focus and goals are.

This thread is awesome. I just started to play the Sims again and I was thinking about taking notes. I am not very techie so I was just going to use paper and keep notes in a folder.