Showing Categories on Wordpress

Happy New Year to all.

What's the consensus on listing categories in the sidebar on a Wordpress blog.
I have about 30 now and it looks stupid to me to have it listed.

But what's the general rule? I've also removed the archive links

 

I just did a quick review of the 10+ blogs I read and unless I'm missing something I think ShoeMoney's is the only one I saw that didn't have the categories listed.

I know it's not extensive research but hope it helps.

 

Thanks a lot Deluxe.... that does help.
I guess what I ought to do is delete some of my cats and reduce it to a minimum.
Appreciate the response

 

If you are using a widget to display your categories you can set it to show a drop down box.

 

Ayyyyyyyyyyyye

 

I was using the drop-down thing for my categories but then I changed themes and the new theme has a category sidebar box so now I have two lists. I would like to keep the dropdown but rid myself of the other box with a full list. I guess I'd have to change the stylesheet for that?
any advice?

 

Better to use category in Drop down menu if you have too many categories else use Tag cloud for that purpose.
You can convert Categories to Tags.