Technology

If you aren't too tech savvy I would recommend against self hosted services. There are amazing solutions out there but they will cost a few bucks.

For cloud storage I use Hetzner's https://www.your-storageshare.de. It's a hosted Nextcloud with pretty much all the freedom you can get. Currently it costs about 5 Euros per month for 1TB of storage. You can even share it with your family and friends because you can create more users on your instance. While I self hosted Nextcloud and Syncthing in the past this is just way less work.

Your-storageshare replaced Dropbox/Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and Google Photos for me. That's a pretty huge chunk of the services I use passively all the time. With Nextcloud's encryption enabled and GDPR regulations in place it is IMHO as save as you can get without self hosting.

For mails I am quite happy with https://mailbox.org - it starts at 1 Euro per month but I recommend the 3 Euros tier. It's no Proton Mail but somehow to me it seems more trustworthy. They don't overpromise on features but provide a solid secure service. Most of the time I send unencrypted mails (due to various reasons) but you could use SMIME with it. Since it provides IMAP you could even integrate it with your-storageshare using the Nextcloud Mail app.

Both services support your own domains so if you fancy it you could set up www.IHadTwoCows.com for cloud and mail. Hetzner has you covered for domains too. Not the cheapest but reliable.

For search I use https://startpage.com. It uses Google results but anonymized. I am very happy with it.

And that, kids, is the story of how I banned Google from my digital life. (okay, Maps is still there but all the alternatives where just not good enough with traffic jams in my city)