How to clear garbage from Mac SSD internal drive?

My MacBook Pro has a 256 GB internal SSD. A few months ago it was full. I ran About This Mac > Storage > Manage > Optimize Storage, that didn't do much. I tried Clean My Mac. Every expert says that's a bad idea.

I noticed that the folder sizes didn't add up. My user account had 6.5GB of my files but used 152GB of storage.

Then I keyed Shift+Cmd+.. This shows hidden files. The 152GB of hidden files became visible.

I found that the Apple Podcast app had stored 6GB of old podcasts. I never listen to podcasts on my MacBook.

Updating some programs leaves the old versions. There were 25 versions of MongoDB, totaling 10GB. I haven't used MongoDB since 2015.

I had 4GB of "Messages." Every picture texted to or from my phone somehow was stored on my MacBook.

I cleared 40GB of garbage from my MacBook. But a few months later the 40GB had been eaten up. Is there an easy way to clear the garbage from a MacBook?

There is an easy way!

1. Use Time Machine to backup your internal SSD to an external SSD or HDD.
2. Use Disk Utility to erase your internal SSD.
3. Restart your Mac holding down command-r to bring up Recovery mode.
4. Restore OS X to your SSD.
5. Use Time Machine to restore your data to the SSD.

All of your stuff will be back and half your SSD will be free. I did this two weeks ago and I have yet to discover anything missing.