I tried to get rid of an app or two early on for the same reason.
Still would clean them out for space, but I found an app called Smart Shortcuts that lets you assign apps to a "tag" that you put on the desktop. Now I tap the tag and it opens to a page of related apps. The only problem is I got Smart Shortcuts from the enTourage store before it closed and I haven't been able to find it where I could grab it since.
There are other apps that do similar desktop arranging, but this one does it for contacts and bookmarks too.
Anyway, maybe something like that will take away the immediate need to remove those pesky unused programs.