I agree with you that pre-Windows 7 a registry cleaner can often reduce problems.
However with the advent of Windows 7 and subsequent versions, the registry is constructed differently, and applications access the registry in a different manner, therefore the fact that it's "untidy" is of no consequence at all, and isn't worth bothering about.
By the way I wonder if this theory you have, also applies to the folks who are still running Windows XP. I sure would hate, "today", to see the years of accumulated TRASH they have acquired. I used the word "today" because 11 months ago I had to clean up a customers REGISTRY. Yes, I had a good registry cleaner to accomplish that task. I purchased it on the internet, it was from England. This customer had accumulated Megabytes of trash!!. And a trashy registry does slow down a system.