Do this if Lightroom Catalog size is inconsistent using a cloud storage folder to store your backups

I found a post several days ago that appeared to be pertinant to a problem I was having. What they were discussing didn't help me. I figured it out and was going to try adding to that discussion, but can't find it again, so thought I'd post it here.

For a few months my catalog backup was inconsistant. Sometimes it would be 2.6GB, sometimes about 9GB and at other times about 18GB. I've never had to use my backups so maybe it's been doing it forever. I started investigating and sometimes, in the backup folder, there would be just a copy of the catalog file, sometimes a copy of the file and also it's zip file and sometimes just the zip file.

I was doing the backup to a folder on my computer that is connected to my icloud drive so it would automatically be saved to the cloud. I started wondering if icloud trying to sync the backup to the cloud was interfering with the backup. I changed my backups to go to a plain folder on a hard drive and it is consistantly 2.6GB after about a week. I then move that backup, when finished, to the icloud folder.

In case anyone else is having this problem, maybe this will work for you as well.