Your examples of "getting rid of clutter" seems more like a play to kill your crack dealer to me. You haven't really solved any problems since everything you tried to get rid of still exists and can be added back again. You just need discipline.
Hey! I worked on something like this on my senior year project! At the time we didn't have easily available SoCs like the Raspberry Pi or a 'strong' smartphone app ecosystem we could use to make it as easily connected as things are today. We used an Arduino hooked up to a laptop with a simple demo app that changed humidity, temperature and lighting conditions for different plants.
I always wondered whether or not the idea was viable. Good luck with this, I'll be watching with interest.
You know I'd imagine you can do lots of cool stuff with this nowadays. Maybe have a camera in there to see how the plants are doing, etc.