I also adopted a similar approach, where I unfollowed ALL my firends so that none of them will show up in newsfeed.

Then I added the few ones I truly wanted to know about to the "Close friends" list which allows you to activate notifications for everything they post.

Now when I log in I only see a bunch of notifications which have a very handy "Mark all as read" link, and I only click further when I see a non-meme status update or an interesting share from them.

I can always search someone and go to their profile, or click on a firend list and see what certain group is up to. And I still find messenger useful, except for the forced "Add to your day" part, from which I daily hide any friends "day" as they post it without opening it (hold click to show that option). I'm about 1 year like this and it has been great, don't feel like I'm missing anything.