iCloud documents mystery - making room

[Acer]

So, my free iCloud is full. I trimmed down my documents folder on my mac. But iCloud won't reflect that. The documents I deleted are not showing in iCloud, but the space they were taking up is still used up. What gives? How do I fix this?

[jdc]

Spend the 99¢/mo to go to 50 GB....

[Sarcany]

Did you have Desktop and Documents sync enabled?

And what OS are you running on your Mac?

[Acer]

I assume I have sync enabled, I mean, that's how they got there. I did not manually move anything. I'm running 10.14.6. I trimmed the files a week ago and the usage has not changed.

(Thing is, I don't need 50 GB. I don't even need 5. The documents we're talking about are less than 3 GB. I don't sync pictures, because then 50 GB would not be near enough.)

[Sarcany]

Are you sure you didn't fill it with iPhone backups?

[rich in distress]

Just for kicks, I’d go first to iCloud files app/recently deleted, and make sure everything is gone.
If it doesn’t work, https://support.apple.com/kb/PH27915
Also, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204247

[Rolando]

I'd like to find out as well.

[Acer]

I moved all my files from the "blessed" Documents folder, but it still shows 4 GB of space taken up by documents. Accessing iCloud via icloud.com shows the Documents folder empty, 0 GB of files, but the usage still shows 4 GB of documents. Trash is emptied. There are some small iPhone backups, and a few other app storage items, all very small, taking up the remaining 1 GB of space.

Mystery remains.