I played vanilla for years, up until about a year ago when I finally got MCCC. It’s my only mod and I actually only wanted it for one thing: to reduce the weekly household bills because my sims were fast running out of money and I thought they were being ridiculously over-charged! There’s so much in MCCC and I’ve never taken the time to go through and explore it all. I’ve used it so little that recently I’ve been toying with the idea of dropping it. I might do that - but then again I don’t know that there’s a need to drop it as it’s always updated really fast after an update. And I’d really miss those reduced household bills!
I think it must be a lot of hassle to keep track of a lot of mods and cc, with patches or updates coming every month. So I think it must make life easier to keep mods and cc to a minimum, but I don’t know that there’s a reason to get rid of absolutely everything unless you feel you don’t need them. And definitely keep anything you’d really miss in a way that would spoil your future enjoyment of the game.