KCNDreams If you list the items you'd like, maybe someone can figure out whether there's a cheaper way to get at least some of them. For example, when you own the greenhouse set, I believe the Best of 2012 compilation is almost free on the Daily Deal. (You might want to buy one other item in the compilation, on a steep Daily Deal discount; let me know if this is relevant to you and I'll dig up the details.) So even if you have no cheap way to directly buy other items in that compilation, you'd still get them for very few points.
I agree that some premium items are extremely overpowered. NRaas Retuner can help with a lot of this in that many OP values can be tuned. Some items are fun anyway, or their overpowered nature doesn't otherwise affect gameplay—who cares if your sims are level 10 in glassblowing; it doesn't have any bearing on the rest of their lives. I especially enjoy items that add new skills for this and other reasons. Some CAS and BB items are nice too, especially for people who don't want to use custom content, but I could do without too much of it.