slow start under Ubuntu 18.04

Lately (over the past several weeks) i’ve been noticing that Libre Office is taking a long time (several minutes) to load. It seems to work correctly once it starts, but the long start time is rather annoying. The pause seems to come between the time the splash screen disappears and the first document appears.

I’m running Libre Office 6.0.6.2 (which is the latest version on the Ubunto channel) under Ubuntu 18.04. It happens with writer, but also Calc and Present.

Most of the suggestions I found involved a memory options panel which is not present in 6.0.6.