Intern Waffle, what you've described and the way you've described it doesn't sound like engaging with game mechanics so as much as it sounds like being slavish to them.
There's the imagination/storytelling aspect of the game to consider here. The game mechanics ideally should allow enough wiggle room for a player to freely construct whatever narrative(s) they choose to create for their households at their leisure. When the mechanics are loose enough to allow for that, then the player can embrace the mechanics that do exist and incorporate them into their narratives.
But when the mechanics become too intrusive and stifling, that all goes out the window, and you have the game dictating what the player needs to be doing at every turn, essentially turning it into a checkpoint/objective driven game.
Besides, it's perfectly possible to introduce new and satisfying gameplay mechanics without slapping yet another system onto the already mile-long simology panel (with all packs and everything enabled). They did it most recently with Businesses & Hobbies by introducing small business gameplay, and they did that without imposing another system on us.
If they're going to continue expanding this game, then I'd much prefer they'd continue along the lines of B&H rather than struggle to come up with yet another new system-based pack. It's getting ridiculous. At this point, I'm half-expecting them to introduce a new "skin dryness" system wherein if you're not applying moisturizing lotion at least five times a day, your Sim will dry up and turn into dust.
The game isn't "dictating what you have to do" by offering you content that has a feature that has consequences, and then the feature happens, and there's consequences.
Your sim wakes up and is hungry. Is the game "dictating what you have to do" because now you eventually have to feed them? C'mon.
That's funny, I don't seem to recall complaining about the hunger bar. Are you trying to to draw a parallel between having to eat when you're hungry and having to wait a day to do things you might like to do because some luck goddess isn't smiling favorably upon you that day?
Look, if you enjoy limiting mechanics, you do you, but you might've considered that other players might not be down with that sort of thing before writing what reads a lot more like lecture to other players than it does an offering of well-meaning advice.
