How to clean up a rooted phone like a factory reset to remove junk in one go?

[gamingoodz]

I rooted my Cricket Samsung GS3 quite a while back and went a little overboard with installing crap.. The phone is a Cricket Samsung Galaxy S3 Model SCH-R530C running Android 4.1.2

Lately the phone is really slow and I would like to completely remove pretty much everything ive installed except the root and whatever settings came from the factory.

Basically just start all over again and this time not install so much crap.

I've read conflicting information on if its safe to do a factory reset on a rooted phone or not. Some say it won't mess up the root and some say it will. Also some say that it will mess up more than the root if the phone is rooted and some say it will be perfectly fine.


What is the best way for me to completely clear all the crap off my phone in one shot while still keeping the root?


Also since I have not been getting my updates anymore since I'm rooted can I install a new version of android? I am on a pretty old version..

EDIT: Should I just install Cyanogenmod? That will wipe everything on the phone with the bonus of a fresh new firmware rite? Is there anything I should back up and should I use titanium backup do the backups?
Thanks.