Quick start/workflow to add photos to edit

Hello, I'm very new to Lightroom. I'm an enthusiast photographer and have traditionally used Canon's DPP software for edits but was captivated by what can be done on the the PS iOS app recently, which led me to download LR CC with a month free trial after a recent Lacie drive purchase. I'm having a very tough time getting started. There's plenty of tutorials on youtube, hours long, which I unfortunately can't watch in length as I probably have on average an hour or two each week to look at the photos. I'm heavily behind in touching up my photos (21k of images for my most recent 'big' trip (I consolidate photos taken by the whole family), and I have a number of other trips too hoping to go through).

I organise my images on external hard drives by year > date of event + event name > specific day (if event is over several days) > camera (if I used several cameras that day). When I start editing photos of that camera, I would create an "edits" subfolder under the camera subfolder. If I went on a holiday to Sydney for a week over Christmas and New Years, and visited some museums on 26th December with my Canon 5DsR and started making edits, my file structure would be: 2018 > 2018.12.25 Holiday in Sydney > 2018.12.27 Darling Harbour museums > Canon 5DsR > Edits

So my question is... is there a way to add all my images to LR so I could start editing them, without needing to create new albums and new folders manually to replicate my file structure in my external hard drives? Is there a way for LR to add my photos, replicating my existing file structure?

As a tag along question, I have many TB of images and I do not want LR CC to try uploading them all to the cloud - not least because there won't be enough space. For now I've paused syncing on the upper right corner button. Is this sufficient or is there a better way to stop this?

I don't want to spend hours replicating my existing file structure on LR , and would rather spend that time editing them. If that was the case then I might just stick to my old methods of DPP. Any help to get along with the program would be very very much appreciated. Hoping this could work out as I was very impressed by the simple adjustments and results on the PS iOS app.

Thank you.