New MacMini setup

My new Mac Mini should arrive next week. It doesn’t seem realistic to create a second iCloud account but instead use the iCloud account I have now which I’m using with a M2 MacBook. Issue is though I’d rather start fresh and reinstall only the applications I want on the new system, along with the desktop and documents and downloads folders and files I want, not everything which is on iCloud nor from a time machine migration for example. I’m wondering what other folks are doing as I can’t be the only one with this issue. I guess I’ll send back the MacBook for credit but I might possibly keep it; haven’t really decided yet.