You have a couple of options.
That suggestion to use shadow files is to help PD handle high resolution clips on less-than top-notch hardware. If you have a reasonably new and powerful PC, you may not need shadow files at all, especially if you're working with HD clips and not 4K.
You can easily try working with shadow files disabled and see if your PC can preview your projects at a usable speed. You will likely need to set the preview resolution to HD, instead of Ultra HD or Full HD, though.
If it turns out that you do need to use shadow files, you can set the auto delete setting for temporary files to something shorter than the 30 days default setting, and/or manually delete them when you finish each project to free up SSD space.
YouTube/optodata
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