Help With Excessively Slow Loading Screens - Sims 4

Can someone help me with these excessively slow loading screens? It's not uncommon to take a full 5 minutes to load the current household once I click resume game, and any other loading screens feel like they take forever. Occasionally the Sim will lag a little if I tell them to go somewhere or do something, but primarily the loading screens are the biggest drag.

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I play on a Dell G5 15 5587 gaming laptop. I've put in two Crucial 16GB RAM for a total of 32GB, which was an easy enough upgrade. I have the Sims as well as my documents folder on a 1TB Solid State Drive. I do have a lot of expansion packs, also on the SSD. I also downloaded the newest version of GeForce, although I don't entirely understand how that works, just that it was a troubleshooting step I should try. It's still slow, although maybe marginally better. I've checked the CPU usage, and it's about 10% normally and 40% while the Sims are open and running. I like to use mods, although everything I'm describing is happening with no mods at all. I've also deleted the local thumb cache. No dice.

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I've had the Sims 4 on this laptop since 2018 (although I've been playing it since 2014). I originally downloaded it straight to the laptop, then to an external hard drive, and now to the SSD as I have learned more and tried to improve things. I don't remember it being this slow except the last year or so. What am I missing?