And it’s not a dementia thing, it’s an adhd+generalized anxiety thing. Piece of mind is pretty valuable to me and mine.

That's a fair take. I dunno, the potential security vulnerabilities outweigh any possible gains for me with most IOT devices, and I feel smart appliances are just more complicated to fix and more easily break down. Plus, the last thing I need is my washer to brick or my fridge to stop working from a botched firmware update.