My conclusion is that my home lab was a learning exercise that comes to an end and that having physical hardware was actually detrimental to it.
I still have a home lab. It's just virtualized.
Whatever works for you, just don't generalize it.
Maybe a bit too direct, but I 100% agree with this comment.
Well, I guess if you are serious about a home lab you need both your normal network and a seperate homelab. I like tinkering with my homelab but I need not to depend on it for my work or internet access.
What if your true Internet access depends on it? Providing un-GFWed Internet access for all my devices is so much easier with the networking gears which happens to be in my homelab setup.