What would you do for a private IFR flight ? Do you find it too conservative ? Or not safe enough ?
If you set yourself such conservative limits, you will most often end up not flying at all and the only benefit of your IR will be ATC guidance instead of circumnavigating airspaces. I found that in particular avoiding low enroute clouds (for the reason that you could not perform a forced landing) imposes a major limit. My strategy is altitude. In Central Europe, there are so many airports that you should always be able to find an ILS equipped airport in gliding distance, provided you have sufficient altitude. Just today I flew from Northern Germany to Southern Germany and at FL140 I felt very safe despite low clouds in most places.
Like Peter said, your goal has to be to quickly climb through clouds and reach VMC for the enroute segment. Neither in summer nor in winter you want to spend your time flying inside clouds. Even in winter with icing, if the cloud layer is not too thick, you can pass through without picking up any considerable ice.