I posted in the general discussion that I was trying to figure out how to use the console and “PlaceAtMe” to add a few chests to Breezehome and Proudspire Manor. I’ve gotten that figured out and learned how to position & scale them with setpos xyz where I want them to go. It works great so far, and it solves the lack of storage options - especially in the basemant of Proudspire Manor.

However, on the wiki: WARNING: Overuse of the placeatme command may result in savegame bloating, which can lead to savegame corruption. So my question is what exactly constitutes as “overuse”? I only added 8 chests to Proudspire and nothing to Breezehome yet because I didn’t want to get too far into this and bug my save. I made a save before I added anything so it's no problem to revert. I just don't want to play for 30 more hours and then have to go back.

I thought I’d come to the experts since most of you guys know about this stuff.

Thanks!

Overuse means thousands and thousands of uses. Placing a few chests and furniture pieces here and there is fine.

it's more a concern for scripter/modders than for personal use. If you create a script that places objects without purging them (ie. a zombie invasion mod that spawns scores of zombies again and again), THAT will have an impact on file size over time

I suggest you ask someone in this thread at the Nexus:
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/477049-renovate-your-house-with-console/page__st__70

They built extra rooms and everything so they must be able to answer your question by just looking at their saves

Again it's using PlaceAtMe along with disable thousands of times that causes savegame bloating. Even just using MarkForDelete (NOT available for oblivion, BTW) instead of disable mitigates the situation considerably (unknown if it does so entirely). The superior approach for summon mods is to use persistent references and avoid PlaceAtMe/Disable entirely.

Thanks for the response guys! that's exactly what I was looking for.

Since Fallout 3, many reference types are cleaned up automatically, even when placed via PlaceAtMe. For example, in Fallout 3 you could create thousands of explosions via PlaceAtMe without ever using MarkForDelete without having to worry about save bloat. If I remember correctly, non-persistent actors were also cleaned up, eventually.

I expect this is still the case in Skyrim.

Cipscis

MMM and IWS both made use of placeatme to increase the number of spawns in the world. Some things are cleaned up by the engine automatically.

It also has a cleanup script, which marks them for delete if one game day has passed.