Using --exclude with the du command

You've almost found it :)

du -ch --exclude=./relative/path/to/uploads

Note no asterisk at the end. The asterisk means all subdirectories under "upload" should be omitted - but not the files directly in that directory.

To exclude multiple directories, just pass the --exclude flag again.

du -ch --exclude=relative/path/to/uploads --exclude other/path/to/exclude

awesome to skip the virtual file systems like so

du -hsx --exclude=/{proc,sys,dev} /*