Are there any ways to decrease the impressively long save times for Sims 3 worlds?

I've been watching my wife play Sims 3, and I've noticed the save times are impressively long. (Load times are fine.)

The save times start off fine on a new world but after a few hours probably take longer to save than her computer would take to install an operating system a few times.

She has a fair number of expansions, but the save times are literally upwards of 10-20 minutes once a world gets somewhat developed.

This is on a brand new i5 processor with 8GB of memory, a Samsung SSD, a fairly good 1GB graphics card with nothing else but Windows 8, Chrome, Steam, and TF2 installed.

Is there any way to fix the unreasonably long save times with this game?

This is probably not going to fix the entire issue since I've never encountered save times as long as you are describing, but I've noticed that the save time also depends on what is currently displayed on your screen.

What I mean is that performing a maximum zoom in the middle of a room or in the garden seemed to reduce the save time. In my case it was maybe going down from 1 minute to 30 seconds, so I'm not sure about the impact it would have on your side, but it's still worth a try.