Beginner Advice

Hey everyone,

I want to get started with a homelab and I’ve been thinking about a setup like this:

Mini PC
NAS

Things I’d like to run on the mini PC:

Paperless-ngx
A dashboard
A wiki
Home Assistant (for example projects like notifications when the washing machine is done)

Those are just the ideas I have so far. Maybe also a password manager, and in general I’d like enough performance so I can add more stuff later if I find something cool.

I’m mainly doing this to learn, but also to build useful things for everyday life.

My main questions are:

1. What hardware would you specifically recommend?
   I’d prefer something power efficient because I don’t want high electricity costs.

2. What NAS solution would fit my use case?
   I want something reliable, but I also want to learn while setting it up. My girlfriend would store videos and photos on it, and I was thinking about backing up Paperless-ngx documents there as well. Is that the usual approach, or how do people normally handle this?

Thanks!