It's hard to answer this question, because everyone uses Emacs for very different purposes.
Further more, a better practice may be to KISS your dotemacs. Since the Easy Customization Interface is widely supported amongst Emacs' modes, you should store all your customization in your custom-file
(which may be a separate place in your dotemacs), and for the dotemacs, put in it only load path settings, package requires, hooks, and key bindings. Once you start using Emacs Starter Kit, a whole useful bunch of settings may removed from your dotemacs, too.