How do you move out of a smarthome?

How do you move out of a smarthome?
shkspr.mobi

1. Everything must be reversible, preferably within a short period of time. If I replace the doorbell or locks with smart ones, I keep the old ones in storage. If I replace light switches, I make sure to document the way the wiring worked before I touched it, and keep everything so I can put it back if/when I move. I had a house with 14 light switches, 2 door locks, a garage door opener, 3 cameras, 7 door and window sensors, like 4 or 5 outlet controllers, and a thermostat all upgraded to "smart devices" in my house, and it took me about 5 hours to set everything back to the way it was before i added anything.

2. Everything should work exactly the same as it did before being "smart-ified", and should never stop working because of a network being down, or a power outage reset it. This means light switches still need to look and act like light switches, in 100% of cases. A thermostat should still work without WiFi, the TV remote should always be able to control the TV, the door should be able to be opened with a key, etc... When my nephew comes over and likes to switch the lights on and off really fast when he can sneak over to it, I shouldn't need to "reset" anything or have it be in a weird state because of that.

3. Rely on external servers as little as possible. If the internet is down, but my local network is up, my whole system should run at least 90% as well as it does with the internet.

Following those few ground rules meant that it cost more to do the whole system, and there were some things I could not upgrade to "smart devices", but it made the whole process much more fullproof, and it was significantly easier when we went to leave (just had to mention that the smart home stuff was not included in the sale of the house).

Light switches were "automated" by putting small z-wave switches in the electrical box of each switch (leaving the original switch showing and acting the same way it always did), z-wave plugs and power strips were used to turn on/off various things if needed, smart lightbulbs were avoided at all costs, the thermostat was reliant on a 3rd party network for the remote switching, but still worked 100% of the time by adjusting it on the wall. Door locks, garage door controllers, doorbell, etc... They all worked completely on their own, and then had the extra "smart" functionality layered on top.

I hear the sentiment that all IoT stuff is garbage, and I have to completely disagree. The cheapest item in the category is probably garbage, but that's common with just about every other area. If you spend the money, if you actually do a little research, there are many options out there which are secure, reliable, and actually built to last.