First off, let me make a confession: I'm an absolute novice when it comes to mods. The thought of Wyre Bash scares me a little, all of my mods are installed witty extracting with 7zip and activating the data file, and I'm generally clueless about the more complicated parts of mod installation.

I've recently been told about a mod which would be utterly perfect for my gameplay - however, I've also been told that this mod requires cleaning. The mod in question is the non-Dragon Captions 'Elder Council' mod, which adds the things I'm interested in whereas the DC version doesn't.

So, my question is: how would I go about cleaning this mod? I'd obviously need TES4edit. But would I need to use anything else or alter anything? Is it as simple as use TES4Edit to clean the mod, extract and enjoy? Or is a more complex procedure involved?

Thanks in advance for your patience. As I mentioned, I'm a little clueless ...

You actually install the mod first, and then clean it. And yes, the procedure is quite simple, you can read about the procedure http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/TES4Edit/Mod_cleaning_tutorial_with_TES4Edit.

Thank you very much!
The mod in question also requires some resource packs. Do I clean these as well, and do I do this at the same time as the 'main' mod?

Are the ESP files? Because cleaning only applies to plugins.

I'm not sure, to be quite honest. I don't think so, but can't be sure. They're downloading now, so I'll be able to find out soon enough.

Thanks for your help, by the way.

Nearly done - just one last question.
The resource packs were esm files. Do I need to clean these as well, or just the two esp files included with the mod?

Only if BOSS marks the .esm as needing cleaning I believe.