Those mods recommend to avoid are painful. I use so many of them. I did take out some that i didn't think would impact my play style, but others are essential for me now. I don't normally notice lag unless im playing with Zombieland enabled.

Looks good. Early versions would really slow down if there were items (e.g. raw foods) on the map with nowhere to store them. My theory being that every tick the game would try to find a place to store the things. This seems still to be the case. So having enough storage space is more important than minimizing it.