ok, this might be a SUPER dumb question and i'm really sorry if you think so, but i was just wondering if it was safe to remove the store stuff? i'm cleaning out my downloads folder and some of the outfits and objects are just not it (ahem castle stuff). i couldn't find any posts on this anywhere but sorry if its already been asked. thanks in advance

Most items you don't want to keep are safe to remove. If it's just a plain object, recolors, clothes, hair or accesories, it's usually perfectly safe to remove via your Downloads folder.

If you can, make sure to remove the items from lots first, or you may see flashing blue items and/or random maxis items where the old items were. This isn't a problem if you've never used the items, of course.

If you're unsure of what NOT to remove, here are some tips:
-Be careful with removing eyes and skin. Removing these will cause broken genetics that most likely will need fixing in SimPE.
-Keep anything that generates NPCs (like Rebecah's animals, or any other hacks based on the remote controlled har or helicopter, or dockable robots, or any other custom NPCs). Placing these objects in a neighborhood means the whole neighborhood is affected.
-Keep hacks or parts of hacks that includes memories (can cause problems if removed, will need fixing in SimPE)
-Keep the sims and genetics (possibly a file?) from multi-PT hacks and similar.
-Be careful with deleting from ingame or Bodyshop - it's always safest to delete from your Downloads folder!
- (This is an incomplete list - I've probably forgotten some things).

thanks a lot for the list, simmer22. the reason i asked about the store stuff in the first place was because the items in CAS lose the custom content icon and some appear to be categorized, so i didnt know if deleting the files would mess with the object files or something (which wouldn't really make sense if they're not even defaults of anything, and the files are in the downloads folder). so you think deleting these files is ok to do?

As long as you remove the files via the Downloads folder, it's safe.

Reason I say this is that occasionally CC will have the icons removed but are still deletable via Bodyshop and/or ingame (recolors, occasionally meshes), and if you do that, this could potentially cause problems, especially if the files are masked defaults/replacements, or fixes or CEP extras or some such.