I am wanting to decrease the size of my CC content folder (its up to 4.3gb) and while my PC can certainly handle that, I prefer not to have any CC that I don't use/need.

That being said, with regard to clothing/genetics, how can I go about decreasing this size without losing needed content? My clothing/genetics file alone is almost 750mb. I'm not sure how it works if you create a sim and save it to a 'package' file if it actually includes ALL the needed content (that exists in folder) so that I can 'safely' delete content that is not needed? ie skintones, custom makeup etc. Or will some files be missing that are not added to the saved sim package?

I don't want to make the same mistake I did a month ago and delete a bunch of stuff I still need. Thanks in advance!

Everything should be included in the sims2pack apart from default replacements, and masters for any repositoried (texture-linked) clothing you have.

there is a program that can reduce the size of PACKAGE files. called Compressorizor; not sure where I downloaded it.

750mb is small, and 4.3 Gigs is pretty conservative. If you are on a low end computer make sure that you only keep the files not the zips, rars or pictures. remove any Readme's or other bits that came come along with files and place those in a matching folder outside of your game. Make sure all files do not contain special charters such as brackets and compress as mentioned above. If you are on a decent computer to put what you have in perspective, is about half to a third less than a lot of us around here.

My DL folder currently has roughly 25 GB (recently cleaned up from roughly 30-35 GB), and my test folder has 4,5 GB, so I wouldn't say 4.3 GB is a lot. Shouldn't be too hard to go through.

You can go through the CC ingame and/or in Bodyshop and see if there's anything you don't need/want, and delete them later from your DL folder. If you're unsure of certain items, move items to a folder outside your game so you can testrun your game. You shouldn't delete items from ingame (you may accidentally delete master mehes or in some cases ingame items if you're not careful). You should also be careful with deleting from Bodyshop. Some default replacements may get the custom star, and these are NOT safe to delete from Bodyshop/ingame.

Be careful with deleting custom skins and eyes - those can bork up genetics if removed. Defaults can be deleted safely, but do so out of the game.

Hairs and clothes will need to be replaced if sims are using them, but they're safe to remove. You should be able to fix sims easily by taking them to a mirror or dresser. Makeup and accessories should be safe to delete, but take sims to a mirror after doing so, to properly remove the items.

You should also delete the cache files after tinkering about, because these can make certain CAS items linger on and occasionally cause troubles (particularly with accessories).

Wow, and here I thought my CC folder was bloated. It takes about 5 minutes to load the game to the NH selector WITH CC, without CC it takes under 20 seconds.

I'm still going to sort through and delete what I don't need or use. Just to free up space and speed things up a bit. If I don't use them, no point in keeping them.

I use Delphys along with Clean Installer and Compressorizer. I just don't know how to handle the 'bodyshop' aspect of the game with regard to genetics so I wanted to doublecheck.

How long you want to wait for the game to load is the judge of how much is too much. If you find 4 minutes intolerably long decrease your CC, if that's peanuts (would be to me ) gather moar! We are all CC addicts around here. I wait about 15 minutes and I am prepared to do that for the CC that I want. Also you can have more than one sims 2 folder if you ever want to do a themed game such as medieval or sci fi. Each download folder is independent of the other.

If you remove genetic body shop CC and sims are wearing it you will need to fix them in SimPE because yes their genes will be borked.

Yeah, I think I'm really going to have to re-think my approach to CC.

With my PC, I can just 'alt-tab' out of the game and do other things in between gaming if I want to take a break and go back later but don't want to have to load the game up again, by just letting it run in the background. I like that I can do that. Maybe I should stick with that approach and see how it goes.

5 minutes is nothing, trust me. On my ancient, now dead laptop I had to wait 3-4 hours (!) for the game to load, with around 10 GB of DLs. I'm not sure how fast my full game loads now, but it used to be around an hour. My test game takes 3-15 minutes, depending on how much I've crammed into it (usually between 4 and 10 GB).

I play windowed because I use Gadwin Printscreen (it doesn't handle the game in fullscreen for some bizarre reason), and I've also gotten used to windowed over the years. I can easily access the pictures, maybe edit in Photoshop, look at Word documents when I'm doing story pictures, or check something ont he web without having to wait for the game to come back up again.

I just put my game down with the Windows button, click it again to load the screen back up, works the majority of the time.

I guess its just a big change to go from less than 20seconds to just over 5 minutes. I honestly didn't realize how long some people have to wait.

I play Cities Skylines and with all the custom assets and mods I use, I wait nearly 10 minutes for a city to load, but given the assets I use, its worth it.

I don't mind waiting so much for custom content I use but rather I mind waiting for content I'm not going to use. By getting rid of unused content, it frees up more space to download more if I so choose.

But what I don't want to do is delete content that I 'think' I don't use only to find out I messed something up, which was a habit of mine with regards to clothing/genetics. So I'm a bit more hesitant with that content.

My biggest custom content folder is actually of Michelles content and recolors. That folder alone is 1.3gb and all her content is already compressed (and very small in size as well). I use her content a lot as well as the 'add-ons' by various creators.

Well don't delete it just move it out to a folder on your desktop. I probably have another 10 Gigs of not installed content. :D

You know, I hadn't thought of that. lol.

That's what I'm going to do. I normally back up all my sims CC, but I never thought about having separate folders for ones I don't want to install at the moment.