I gutted my Home Assistant setup over a weekend. I focused on two things: dashboard design and Home Assistant automation. The goal was a usable smart home that actually saves time, not one that looks clever. I kept the changes small and reversible. That made testing safe and quick.
Start by assessing your dashboards. Open each view and time how long it takes to reach common actions, like toggling lights or starting the vacuum. Count clicks. If common tasks take more than two taps, reorganise. Aim for a single, compact quick-actions view with your top six controls: lights, heating mode, front door, garage, vacuum, and an emergency toggle. Move rarely used sensors to a diagnostics view. Name entities clearly and consistently, for example light.kitchenceiling rather than light.kitchen1. Use conditional visibility so controls show only when they matter, for example show the garden sprinklers card only between April and October. Try button-card for obvious actions and entities card for status. Keep layout tight. Test the new layout with a household member and ask them to perform three typical tasks while you watch. Note where they hesitate and shorten that path.
Next, simplify automations for efficiency and safety. Start an audit. Export your automations and sort by last-triggered time. Disable automations that have not fired for months, then observe the house for a week before deleting. Rename automations to include trigger and intent, for example motionloungelightsnight or doorleftopenalert. For safety, add a small set of high-confidence automations: a fire alarm chain that turns on all lights, unmutes speakers, and sends a push notification with the room name; a ventilator boost when kitchen humidity crosses 70 per cent; a bin-reminder automation tied to calendar events. Test safety automations with test triggers and watch the entity states and the log entries while the test runs. Use input_booleans or an automation pause input to stop dangerous side effects during tests.
Log management matters. Clear the recorder and logger noise before making changes. Exclude noisy integrations from recorder to keep the database small. Set logger levels for noisy components to warning or error. Purge old events with recorder.purge and set purgekeepdays to a reasonable value, 7 to 30 days depending on available space. Mark unavailable entities in the UI so they do not clutter the dashboard during intermittent hardware updates. For persistent flapping devices, set a template sensor that reports a stable, debounced state instead of showing raw unavailable spikes.
Staging hardware reduces disruption. Add Shelly modules or ESP32 boards in batches of three to five. Flash ESPHome locally and assign static IPs. Name devices before you integrate them into automations and dashboards. Keep a staging area in Home Assistant for new devices and run them there for a day. That catches issues such as duplicate entity ids, unstable Wi-Fi, and dodgy power supplies. When a device is steady, move it to the main area and add it to the relevant dashboard.
Finally, make reviews part of the routine. I schedule a short review every two weeks to tidy automations, prune logs, and test safety flows. Keep automation triggers simple and documented. Use automation.trigger and check the states that should change. Keep dashboard design focused on tasks, not status noise. The result is a smart home that behaves predictably, recovers from hiccups, and gives clear controls when needed.
