I was feeling the same, so I played Sims 2 for a couple months, and realised how much I enjoy rotational play, so that's what I'm doing now in the sims 4.
Here's how I set it up. I deleted all residential lots in 2 worlds. Then I deleted all sims in manage worlds, excluding Father Winter. I set seasons to 28 days. I plopped down 4 lots in each of the worlds also some community lots, a pool, restaurant and bowling alley etc. So, I'm playing 8 families, a week at a time. I'm playing on normal lifespan and have set aging off for unplayed sims and aging on for only active household. The game does spawn new sims, but I set neighbourhood stories to not move in for the unplayed sims, and not to move out for my played households. So far this has been working, no npc sims have moved in to any of the other worlds. Make sure to keep your families in 'my households'.
I'm not a builder so I downloaded lots from the gallery.
It didn't take long to set up and playing each family for a week means I don't get tired of them and I look forward to playing the next household.
I play with no mods at all, I used 'free real estate' cheat to move my families into the lots.
:)