Homelab projects to try this weekend (January 9
Now that we’re a week into 2026, it’s time to take a look at some other homelab projects to try this weekend. Instead of complex and complicated projects, I focus more on getting organized and preparing for a successful year from the start. Here are three projects to work on over the next few days.
Finally take control of your home inventory with HomeBox
Did you actually throw away that old hard drive or is it still in the drawer?
I have considered building a home inventory many times. About 10 years ago I considered using an app called Sortly for this. I started recording a lot of elements there, from my Funko! POP collection, tech pieces and more. Unfortunately, Sortly had a pretty limited free tier and I never got around to using it. I abandoned 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 is deployed via a simple Docker container and offers many features.
In HomeBox, you can define items, add optional details, save an item’s price, provide custom labels, and much more. It supports multi-user mode, and each user can only see items that belong to them unless they have elevated privileges.
So if you’re ready to take inventory of your home (or just your homelab), fire up HomeBox and give it a try.
Make meal preparation easier with Mealie
Saving recipes has never been easier.
I don’t know about you, but my wife and I are always sending each other recipes. 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 create recipes manually or import them from a website. Importing is quite simple and just requires the recipe URL, which can even work with recipes shared on social media, although these are more random.
Mealie is not just a recipe management system, however. It offers meal planning, shopping lists and much more. Mealie is actually a complete meal prep and organization system rather than just a recipe storage bin.
Really, Mealie is for anyone who struggles with knowing what to eat when, or if you’re constantly drowning in a sea of recipe links that you don’t know how to stay on top of.
Keep track of all those links you want to check out one day with Karakeep
Stop bookmarking everything and use a proper link manager.
I constantly have links open that I want to remember to read at some point in the future, but I decide to just keep them open in my browser because that seems like the best option at the moment. Eventually I close the tab because I just haven’t had time to read it and “I’ll remember to take a look later”. I never remember it. If you’re like that, then Karakeep is the perfect addition to your homelab.
The problem I have is that most of these links I want to read later are about things to do in my homelab, ways to upgrade it, or new software I want to check out. Karakeep lets you save all those links in one simple place featuring categorization, thumbnails, and more.
You can also use Karakeep for more than just URLs. It supports notes, images and much more. You can use the tagging system to collect all kinds of information about your next vacation, for example. Use Notes to jot down hotel information, upload photos of places you want to visit, and save links with crucial information (like museum hours).
Karakeep is something I’m definitely going to incorporate into my homelab, because I really need a way to organize all the services I want to try with the appropriate categories, and normal browser bookmarks just aren’t enough.
These three projects aren’t really that difficult, and you could probably deploy them all this weekend. However, if you want to fully configure them, be prepared to take some time.
Homelab projects are not about complexity, but rather about return on investment in time. For example, HomeBox may take just a few minutes to deploy and a few hours to inventory, but it will be worth its weight in gold in the event of a break-in or natural disaster.
So while these may not be the most complex projects, take the time to deploy Docker containers and organize your home as you start the new year.
