Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1trm5pr/my_homelab_became_more_than_a_hobby_today/

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The original was posted on /r/homelab by /u/CandidNeighborhood63 on 2026-05-30 01:39:08+00:00.

My wife and I used to have a couple of Alexa devices for home automation and more importantly, grocery lists. It was so handy to say, "Alexa, add garlic to the shopping list". But then, Alexa started to get weird and became more ads than was actually helpful. She's since been boxed up and put away, but the app still resides on our phones for the grocery list. Being able to collaborate on the same list and mark stuff off was nice, but it was still Alexa. I finally put the last nail in her coffin yesterday.

Some time ago, I convinced my wife that a Plex server would be awesome (really wasn't a hard sell), so I got my hands on an older Dell R730 with a few terabytes of storage, nothing major. Plex is up and running, limited to my network. I've been finding other projects to better utilize this jet engine. Pi hole? Check. A virtual TTRPG environment? In progress, and so close to being done. A few other sandboxes here and there, and I've been learning a lot. But it still felt like just a hobby, and not something incredibly useful, until recently. Remember the frustrations with Alexa? I spun up something called Mealie, as well as a self hosted VPN. So I was at the store tonight with my spouse, and she was bemoaning the fact that we still rely on an Amazon product. With a big old grin, I whipped out my phone, tunneled into my network, connected to Mealie, and pulled up the grocery list. It was absolutely incredible that all the work that went into getting that all to work is paying off. I now have a very usable tool that can help fix actual problems in my life, like meal planning.

I will say though, with all the extra added security and time spent getting this going, I have a much higher appreciation for the folks over at Amazon and how simple it is to use their products. I'm still not going back, but I have more respect now