Same thing here. I have all the expansions, stuff packs and both official AL patches on top of it (with no-CD exe, if that's relevant).

  I guess after over 50 hours of reading about all the supposedly innocuous things that can - surprise! - turn your game into a BFBVFS one becomes quite paranoid...

Thank you. I read the "Deleted 2: Electric Boogaloo!" thread twice yesterday, but then saw the reference to deleting Character folders here and wanted to double-check. From what I've read so far, the BFBVFS is approaching... as I have also moved sims between neighbourhoods in my game. Wish I had discovered MATY earlier.
One more question: is it safe to pack a house (after you have evicted the family) and then install it in a clean neighbourhood?

Is that safe to do after you have played your game with AL installed? And also, is it safe to delete the Characters subfolders from other expansions? I have 1200 character files in my favourite (custom) neighbourhood and would love to get rid of at least some of them, but according to what I've read here so far, simply deleting character files is a VBT.

You may want to try this: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=299368
It's called "No Reagents Needed for Spells".