I guess I must be one of those people with a tidy mind but this is something I am quite passionate about.

Having said that there is no need to be obsessive about it, but doing a cleanup once in a while has many benefits but the most important is reduction of wasted effort when changes to tables/views are made.

I took a new role once, where both db and web code were in a horrendous state. 1000's of object in the database, 1000's of web assets and no one had any idea what everything did. When the business wanted a change made, doing an impact analysis on the code threw up 100's of changes every time.

This was totally unsustainable so myself and collegues set to task to clean things up via db and web logging. It took some time, but eventually we removed 67% of ALL code in the system with no impact on the end product. It meant 2 out of every 3 'blind' proc changes were a complete waste of time.

That then allowed us to actually take that product forward as when impact analysis was then done, we knew that we were not wasting our time. Productivity and quality skyrocketted as a result.

Having had that exeperience I have done the same at my next 2 jobs, both with similar results.

Once the system is clean - then put the db under source control, build processes and change management and voila - you never have the worry again.

Periodic cleanups then keep everything in order - and trust me its not as burdonsome as you may think.