Yeah, I've been trying to get away from the AUR too. Besides switching to alternatives from the main repo like you, I've also been using AppImage, Flatpak, brew and cargo. I think the only main AUR package remaining for me (not counting dependencies) is chawan-git.

As for keeping updated on the situation, I've been following the news in the Arch Linux discord and the Github page which had the AUR malware scanning script.

What's wrong with Dropbox?

Might be fun to do if you are unemployed, but since you've mentioned a job it's better to just read the install script for the high level overview then install it manually.

The general idea is to find a small set of programs, in a more supported set that serves your usecase. So you learn more about a smaller number of programs. Downside is that you are now able to rewrite your entire system in a single language.