Do install both the Play Store and Play Services if you want to use any Google app like YouTube or Maps (even some non-Google ones will need it). Then use a more private app store like Aurora and remove all permissions from the Play Store to strike a good middle-ground.

I unfortunately use play services on both my main profile and gaming profile (I had to make a seperate non Premission Manager X profile to be able to play games), but if you're smart like Veronica in her GrapheneOS video, you can do a degoogled profile and a sandboxed profile!

If I could convince my family to contact me through Signal/Molly rather than Google Messages, maybe I could go completely degoogled on one profile. But alas.