Now that we’re a week into 2026, it’s time to take a look at some more homelab projects to try out this weekend. Instead of complex and complicated projects, I’m focusing more on getting organized and setting myself up for a successful year from the start, so here are three projects to work on over the next few days.
Finally get your home’s inventory under control with HomeBox
Did you actually throw that old hard drive away, or is it still in the drawer?
I have considered building out a home inventory many, many times. About 10 years ago, I looked at using an app called Sortly for this. I started to log quite a few items in it, from my Funko! POP collection to pieces of tech and more. Sadly, Sortly had a fairly limited free tier, and I never actually finished using it. I gave up on the idea of a home inventory, and never revisited it.
These days, however, you can self-host a pretty robust home inventory manager with HomeBox. HomeBox deploys via a simple Docker container and offers quite a bit of functionality.
Within HomeBox, you’re able to define items, add optional details, log how expensive an item’s value is, provide custom labels, and so much more. It actually supports multi-user mode, and each user can only see the items that belong to them, unless they’re given elevated privileges.
So, if you’re ready to take inventory of your home (or just your homelab), then spin up HomeBox and give it a try.
Make meal prep easier with Mealie
Saving recipes has never been easier.
Credit: Mealie
I don’t know about you, but my wife and I are always sending recipes back and forth to each other. Mealie can be deployed via Docker, just like HomeBox, and is simple to run in your homelab.
Once deployed, Mealie is very simple and straightforward to use. You can either manually create recipes or import them from a website. Importing is pretty straightforward, and just requires the URL for the recipe—which can even work with recipes shared on social media, though those are more hit or miss.
Mealie isn’t just a recipe management system, though. It offers meal planning, grocery shopping lists, and so much more. Mealie is really a full meal prep and organizational system rather than just a recipe storage locker.
Really, Mealie is for anyone who struggles to figure out what to eat when, or if you’re constantly drowning in a sea of recipe links that you have no idea how to keep on top of.
Keep track of all those links you want to look at someday with Karakeep
Stop bookmarking everything and use a proper link manager.
Credit: Karakeep
I constantly have links open that I want to remember to read at some point in the future, but I just decide to keep open in my browser because that seems like the best option at the time. Eventually, I close out the tab because I just didn’t have time to read it and “I’ll remember to look into it later.” I never remember. If you’re anything like that, then Karakeep is the perfect addition to your homelab.
The problem I have is that most of those links that I want to read later are about things to do in my homelab, ways to upgrade it, or new pieces of software I want to check out. Karakeep allows you to save all those links in one simple place that offers categorization, thumbnails, and more.
You’re also able to use Karakeep for more than just URLs. It supports notes, images, and much more. You could use the tagging system to collect all sorts of information for your upcoming vacation, as an example. Use the notes to jot down hotel information, upload pictures of places you want to visit, and save links that have crucial information (like the hours of a museum).
Karakeep is something that I’m definitely going to integrate into my homelab, as I really need a way to organize all the services that I want to try with proper categories, and normal browser bookmarks just aren’t cutting it.
These three projects aren’t really all that difficult, and you could likely get all of them deployed this weekend. However, if you want to fully set them up, be prepared to take some time.
Homelab projects aren’t about complexity, but rather the return on your time investment. For instance, HomeBox might only take a few minutes to deploy, and a few hours to inventory, but it will be worth its weight in gold if you ever have a break-in or natural disaster.
So, even though these might not be the most complex projects, take some time to deploy the Docker containers and get your home organized as we start the year off.
