I currently have 50,302 package files in my game probably need to clean a bit, huh. 21.5 GB

I try my best to keep it as lean as possible. Most of my mods are quality of life improvements (like the Pet Away sign) and bug fixes.

~ 66 MB if I recall

66MB? I don't know how you do it. I'd go mad without all of my recolours.

I've just done a major overall, going through and removing everything that isn't actually used in the current hood and I have just that one hood in the current game folder (I use separate game folders for different types of play), so now the Downloads folder is just under 1GB. I could probably trim a bit more.

Just spent the day trying to cut down on my running tabs in Chrome (it's been fluctuating between 50 and 90 for about two weeks now, ) and now my download folder is up to 21.8. I've got 8 GB is just for clothes and hair! All you simmers with your 1 GB this and MB that, you've all got some magical willpowers.

@Phantomknight -You should see what's in my game if you think you're bad for having CC and hacks in your game.My fridge menu for mealtimes is insane because I've got tons of custom foods and a breakfast anytime hack from here in my game.That's just one of many hacks installed.My buy mode catalog is no better than the fridge with the tons of meal options.
I went a bit crazy with custom foods not needing any cooking skill or a stove to help newbies without any cooking skill to be able to have more options for dinner than instant meal drinks after having sims almost starve overnight because I could have them eat dinner before OFB because they could't fix any dinner.

14.6 GB. Not sure how it rose that high, and probably explains why my Sims can't go to commercial lots or drive to work any more (they have to walk - but oddly schools are not affected). 50/50 didn't fix the problem because even after removing all clashing mods, both halves of the 50/50 displayed the same problem. I need to do some more thinking on this matter...

IDK but counting the hacks, clothing replacements, CC and food mods I have 698 .package files

Not counting the stuff in the Program Files folder, my Downloads folder is currently 32,904 files taking up just under 9.5 Gb. Roughly 2300 of those files are mods.

Playing the game on a fresh install from earlier this year, on a custom gaming desktop with an SSD.

My Main game: 7.51GB and it loads in about 23 seconds give or take (with all cache deletions and newly added content it's closer to 30 seconds) from launch to 'hood. Lots load in seconds as well.

My Research Station game : 1.84GB and it loads almost instantly (with or without cache deletion).

So yeah, no complaints.

21400 files
1172 folders
3,95 gb

... how can that be possible?

When peoples downloads folder is bigger than the game itself. That's a life evaluating moment.

*simsample evaluates life*
*simsample boots Sims 2*

I've managed to add tons more CC to my game and still haven't had trouble loading it yet although I have some cleaning up to do on my computer's hard drive with the help of 7zip and some external storage.

Somewhere on 8GB

I did some cleaning:

20623 files
1160 folders
3,84 gb

It's still a bit too much (I'm on a laptop).

My downloads folder is 1.94 GB. It contains 4,428 files and 677 folders.

If your downloads folder isn't bigger than the game you aren't a real simmer!!!!11
*cough*jk*cough*notcovid*cough*

@Pideli -I strongly suspect my downloads folder has well over 10000 files and that was the last time I counted the files a few years ago and tons more has gooten in there since then.I've got one of the most Mod and CC laden games of all and it still loads like it's a vanilla game without and content installed.

Tad, I beat you!

Wow, my folder has 11 300 files and it's 4.30 GB. Yours has more than thrice as many files but is less than twice as big. How did you do that @simsample ?

I've read briefly people talking about compressorizing so I assume it's that, but wouldn't you lose quality? What do you even use?

Nah, I don't bother compressing (unless the creator already compressed), I figure the game then has to decompress, and hard drive space is no issue. Most of my downloads are mods or objects, I don't have that many retextures and I'm choosy about clothes and hair (only the most silly go in my game). So that's probably why my filesizes are quite small.

Ah, that explains it. Mine is heavy with hairs and clothes. Mostly female hairs though.

Would be interesting to hear how people's downloads are divided... like how many hacks people have in comparison to objects or clothes or hair... Not sure if I have more or fewer hacks than most simmers. I have 313 files in my hacks folder (but many of them are .txt files) and it's 9 MB. And some hacks are in defaults (I think the line between a hack and a default is blurry so not sure how to count them )

My biggest folder is Furniture (Buy objects). It has 2/3 of all files in Downloads.

If you don't like red hands and can't dance the smustle, you aren't a real Sim!!!!
[Sorry to go so off-topic -- but I couldn't resist it!]