I'm fiddling around to figure out what I care about most vs what is really not that big of a deal. Some mods have side effects and I had no idea how severe some of them were until I tried the game without them. I was layering mods to take care of side effects of other mods. This got out of control.
The thing I hate most about vanilla sims in sims 3 is their flat faces and their wispy hair. Yes, all the other little tweaks add a little more polish, but they don't each make the same drastic difference. I am keeping the default skin replacement and I will add nondefault hair only to the very few sims that I am playing or having a relationship with. I never did try to override all the hairs. That must be a huge load on the game!
I am not even adding most of the store content that I own and will be buying very little more of that. I only installed the Tab 6000 and the Stiff as a Board Light as a Feather pack for my current save.
I have one CC hair, a pair of sneakers, and a notebook, and a yoga mat.
I added back in more food mods than I want to keep. I am going to take some back out again and I am not going to buy more of the farming and baking and retail stuff from the store.
The game is running much faster and providing all sorts of pop ups that were previously disabled. Mods cause us to lose something as well as giving us something.