Trying to find the culprit taking up space on Catalina HD I am at a loss of how to clear up system files manually on a 2017 MBP. Upon running du -h -d 1 I get;



Now the private folder is way too big and I am cautious to clear that out. I know I could clear the private/var files to an extent but want to try and avoid that. The user caches say they are  only taking up 7.3GB, after running du -sh ~/Library/Caches. 

Any guesses of where/what I can purge to get this system's storage down? Any help is greatly appreciated.
You should use DaisyDisk or Disk Inventory X.  These apps will make a color map of your disk showing what's taking up space. Daisy Disk is not free but has a free trial. Disk Inventory X is free.  These will break down you system folder to show what is using disk space.