It depends what you are using the instance for. Most of my accounts are on a single user instance at social.growyourown.services and it works fine as my accounts are mainly information/announcements rather than personal.
The blocklist updates should hopefully get easier if the planned blocklist subscription system gets implemented, but for the moment you can mitigate it by using ready-made blocklists. More info at https://fedi.tips/importing-ready-made-server-blocklists-on-mastodon/