In reply to Mike_d78:
I'm actually doing what you're doing - though not as dramatically. I basically import from my camera into a "To Do" folder, and add it to the "To Do" collection, which is then synced to LR-Cloud.
This way, only smart previews are added to the cloud storage which take up nominal space - I seem to remember reading that smart previews don't actually count towards your cloud usage either.
It's not a perfect solution for me as you don't then have the full versions in the cloud (for downloading, sharing etc), and if you upload straight to the cloud, this doesn't add the image into LR-Classic (just the collection, but it won't auto-download the photo to my desktop). So if I add photos once on holiday, it's a bit of a faff to download them into Classic.
It's close mind, and having full Photoshop in the package too is useful on occasion.