A home should be comfortable and cozy - a place to unwind and rechard. Home maintainence, however, is a Sisyphisean struggle. A smart home should extend one's ability to maintain a comfortable, happy home.
A smart home knows when it is occupied, and adjusts the temperature and lighting accordingly. << Double Use of When YES >> It knows the time, and helps you wind down for sleep and wake up refreshed. It knows how how your shower should be. It greets you with the morning news, forcast, and notifications. It tells you when the laundry hamper is full, as well as when the wash it done. It prevents you from buying more milk before the carton in the fridge spoils. It lets you order more toilet paper at the push of a button. It supports you, helping you live the life you deserve.
Though, through a bidet, it may "wipe your ass for you",<< where does this comma go dammit >> a smart home doesn't pick up after you. It isn't a parent, it's a tool. While it extends your memory with a query interface ("Is the milk in the fridge bad?") and can set notifications and reminders, it fundamentally doesn't do jobs for you.
Home maintainance, when not overwhelming, can be a calming meditation. A connection between you and your environment. A time to practice building and completing your habits. Your engagement is essential to making your home hospitable.
A smart home doesn't force a dogma upon you. It allows you to build your workflow and process in an ad-hoc but organized way. You personalize your smart home's capabilities. Example workflows are meant to be adapted to your needs.
Similarly, a smart home should be a growable, modular system. It should be built upon some set of open standards so that your imported Japanese toilet can be controlled by the home. It also shouldn't have a single point of failure - no singular "brain" to spill water on. To do this, we will have to make great strides in zero configuration networking, but it will be done.
A smart home shouldn't force you to buy smart furniture or smart lamps. It should tap into the existing infrastructure as much as possible. The x11 home automation system's brilliance was using the quiet part of alternating current to send signals through the walls. Any smart home system must be an evolutionary system that adapts to changing technology without dropping "legacy" systems.
Smart wall outlets can control simple appliances like lamps. Small, low power robots can control light switches and oven knobs. Infrared remote controls can be obsoleted by an Internet-Powered microcontroller with an LED.
You should be able to use your own light bulbs and lamps within your smart home.
Your home should be private. What you do behind closed doors is your business. When you sleep, when you wake, how quickly you use toilet paper, etc. are entirely your own business, not mine, not a government's.
For this reason, a smart home should actively protect the data it accumulates about you, and share it as little as possible.
That being said, some capabilities can only be enabled by Internet-Powered devices. Amazon's Echo & Alexa assistant simply would not work as standalone products without being able to connect to fleets of computers running in the cloud. The smartest home will, for now, require sharing its data with artificial intelligence companies like Google, Amazon, and MicroSoft.
But that's entirely your choice, not the home's.
A smart home should help you take care of yourself and your family. It should help you save energy without sacrificing much comfort. It should help you with your schedule. It should monitor your facilities and notify you as needed. It should allow you to ask questions about your house, such as "are the dishes done?" or "is there space in the freezer?"
It should not divorce you from the struggle of maintainance. Instead, it should be a tool that empowers you to create the perfect home. Because your home is your sanctuary. And you deserve it.