Couple of questions that are related to each other:

1 - It seems like our items database is taking longer and longer to load. Is this because we keep adding items?  We have roughly 5,000 inventory items; is it just a given that the database will take longer to load the more items are in it? 

2 - If that's the case, I'd like to delete a bunch of items we no longer have in our inventory. If I do that, will the item still appear in sales reports? In other words, if I run a report to find out the top-selling items of the last six months, for example, will items that no longer exist in our database still be a part of that?  

Thanks to anyone who can shed some light!