I love the smart home conversation at the end but I had some thoughts to share:
- It’s better to assign a HomeKit hub if possible. Matter devices tend to need a restart when the primary Matter controller, your primary HomeKit hub, changes. So by manually assigning this to a stable device, it prevents issues with your Matter devices that might occur when the hub changes
- Matter in robot vacuums is nice in Apple Home but many robots also support some version of Apple’s Shortcuts which can get you close to the same experience without springing for a newer, high-end Matter robot.
- Instead of triggering lights with your voice, get the new $6 Matter over Thread buttons from IKEA. They pair directly to HomeKit and the two I purchased work well. This is also a nice first step before doing things like sensor automation.
- I have no idea about what could be broadcasting your old Wi-Fi!
I wonder about a forgotten water leak sensor being the voice in the wilderness, because they are set-and-forget, and often in places we don’t see on a regular basis.
I also wondered about a forgotten smart lighbulb.
lol! Good ideas and great descriptions 
Something I think worked for me in 2025 is making a “today” view in mail.app.
TLDR: I don’t get a lot of email, so this is just what I need, might not be for everyone.
I made a smart mailbox in Mail that just shows mail received in the last 2 days, in all mailboxes. I originally had it set to just the past day but realized I would miss messages sent after work, when I stop checking work email, since the search is just looking at calendar days, not 24 hour time periods. So I can easily find email from yesterday too.
I can filter that view by unread too, to quickly triage anything new that comes in. It’s just a more calming experience to be able to “put my hands around” my inbox, make it more manageable.
I also have used Column layout without the side preview for a few years now, where it’s just two horizontal columns on top of each other, not side by side. I like to see a large view of the list of emails in my inbox (with the sender, subject, mailbox etc, on one line), scan them below and then I open them in a new window if warranted. Most of my email can be managed without opening each message in a new window. I like being able to sort mail by date, unread, starred, sender, etc.
I also have some other inbox views as tabs across the top of the app, so I can just toggle between them quickly and my email experience is just one view basically, a list of relevant emails.
I think this has been working for me, I like minimizing my already small interactions with email.
With regard to being alerted when your mailbox has received an item, one cheap partial solution might be to set up Informed Delivery from USPS which let’s you know when tracked items have been delivered to your mailbox.
With this set up you can choose to be alerted when items are delivered. I’ve been receiving emails anytime an item that is tracked is delivered (typically this can arrive even whilst the mail van is still at my bank of mail boxes). And when checking the notification settings on the USPS website I saw that there was a new option to be notified when any mail that is part of Informed Delivery is delivered - so I’ve just enabled that and will see what differs there.
This should then allow a shortcut to be set up based on sender and/or email subject details.
Are there similar options in other countries outside of the US I wonder? (Though not quite as necessary in locations where mail is delivered through a mail slot in the door…)