I turn off aging and other things on played houses, and then every time I load up Sims 4 I just flip around the map until there's a household I want to 'look in on' and do something with.
I keep my active households pretty small. Even when I've had as many as 3 sims in them I've found it a burden to get to one before they ran off and lit the house on fire... ;)
My townie households end up becoming large communes thanks to MCCC and having autonomous move in and marriage all on, and when I household ends up getting put together I look it over and either edit the fashions of the townies or delete that one and let MCCC put another in there. I've flipped on nearly every autonomous setting I could find, and gave it settings to build the kinds of 'world activity' I want.
- This gives me some minor control over the 'background cast' without micro-managing them.
