It's no trouble to keep everything you come across or actively search for. Not in today's world with 20TB HDDs being near entry-level in cost now.

It will not weigh on you mentally if you just tell yourself it doesn't. Just don't think about it. And you can hide it under the bed in a cardboard box if it bothers you to look at it.:crazy

What works great is a big hoard and reference archive and collection. And then as time rolls on, leisurely curate and sort out material for your favorites. Keep your favs in a special folder or separate drive even - this is the stuff you play with all the time. This is the material you would obsessively organize. This is the gold so to speak.

You may even be surprised at how small your pile of fav games and necessary tools actually is!

And it's not like anything is thrown out. Nor is it in the way. You can always re-retrieve things from your archive or the internet (mostly, at present). You can add and change your favs over time.

When I was doing physical cartridge collections it became a problem. I wanted it all. And my cart collection swelled to thousands of games. It got crazy. Took a lot of time and space and money. But with digital all those problems went away. The burden of just looking at mounds and mounds of stuff suddenly dissipated. I could pull out my favorites instantly and set them aside.

It was (and remains) a transforming experience.