Sims 4: Help please - sims freezing and unresponsive

Hi guys 

I have an issue that is driving me absolutely insane (and quite frankly - it's giving me the sh*ts).

Over the last few days (started playing Sims 4 again about a week ago after not touching it for 6-12 months), my sims have been freezing constantly! This happens in the middle of them doing a task and i have to either use the resetSim cheat or the testingcheats / shift+click and reset (debug) option (which I only activated yesterday). 

After i do the reset and reassign the task to them, they are unresponsive and don't start the task, so i repeat the reset process. This has been happening nonstop.

I googled and found this is a common thing and also found the recommendation of moving your Mods folder to your desktop, deleting the localthumbcache.package file, repairing the game and starting again. I've done this about 3 times now and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. My game is up to date, i recently did a disk cleanup on my computer to help with the lag and I even restarted to see if it was my laptop needing an update.

I'm so frustrated; as like everyone else, i've paid for this game including multiple expansions, stuff packs etc, but i can't play it without it glitching out and me having to reset! ☹️ I've even started considering buying a new computer, but that is just bogus, right?! i shouldn't have to do that!

Can someone please help me? This shouldn't be happening!

I appreciate any help that can be thrown my way. 

Thanks 

Britt