removing redudant kernal libraries after kernal reinstallation

I'm learning to administer a VPS which has an openVZ kernel (= go easy...). I thought I'd attempt to load a missing kernal module by reinstalling my kernel with: sudo apt-get install -y linux-image-$(uname -r) Not only did that fail to get the module I needed, my disk usage doubled. My VPS host admin loaded the module in the host kernel which solved that issue. But now I have 8+GB of redundant OS libraries for Ubuntu 18.04. How can i remove these redundant libraries? apt auto-remove didn't help. Besides starting from scratch, would appreciate suggestions how one can reclaim the 8+GB of SSD space I carelessly lost!