Duplicate applications

I was doing some summer cleaning on my MBP last night. Just archiving photos on my external HDD and just clearing up HDD space on my internal. So I checked all the finder window side folders (music, movies, documents, etc.) I uninstalled some apps I don't need anymore. Then I checked the size of my application folder, it was around 8 gigs with a little over 100 items. Not a big deal to me. Next I checked the size of the home folder? It's the one above applications with my name and a little house icon. It has 150 some items, and is over 30 gigs. I know there's a lot of things in there that need to be like settings and preference files. But every single one of my apps is also duplicated in there.

I was just wondering if they are supposed to be in there and in my app folder? Or am I wasting space on my hdd by having all those duplicates? I noticed too that my music, movies, pictures, and documents folders are in there too. Are they actually duplicated in there, or is it just a link of sorts to that folder?

I appreciate any help.

Any apps in the folder harddisk > Applications are available to all users on your mac

Any apps in Harddisk > Users > YourFolder > Applications will only be available to you.

it is best to keep all apps in harddisk > Applications, you should only have apps in your user folder if you don't want to share them or don't think another user on your mac needs it

I am the only user on my mac. So there aren't even any other accounts on it. But what you're saying is, I should be safe to delete all the apps inside my user folder without any bad consequences?