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You can either save the family and lot, and import them to your game when you reinstall, or else you can save an entire neighborhood and copy that in to your new game.
The save games and userdata are in the location where you installed your game- which is Program Files(x86)\Maxis\The Sims by default. These files are (unless you changed it) protected by UAC, so for this reason I would recommend to reinstall to a location outside of the Windows or Program Files folders; I always create a folder called C:\Games, so my game is installed to C:\Games\Maxis\The Sims.
To save your entire neighbourhood, note the neighbourhood number and exit the game. Copy the entire Userdata folder for your hood- which is by default Program Files(x86)\Maxis\The Sims\Userdatax where x is the neighbourhood number. That folder can then be copied into your new game installation- you can renumber this folder (so call it Userdata9 if you like) to have more than the standard 8 neighbourhoods.
Here are instructions for importing a specific family/ house to a new hood:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/...oz&guccounter=1
See the comment by 'Peezo Puffer'.