This, about RAM, is a much misunderstood bit about monitoring resource usage.
Also: cpu usage. When someone comes to me with 'panic, panic, your application is using 100% cpu', I'm like 'great, call me when it doesn't', for then there's a bottleneck elsewhere.
I'm not saying there's no such thing as software bloat (there is) but the reason that your computer magically always seems to use 80-90% of the ram no matter how much ram you install is that the computer understands empty ram doesn't do anything but ram being used to cache files makes your user experience much fasterthis is a good thing! if your computer stopped doing this everything would suddenly feel very sluggish and stuttery!