I’m running Mint currently

I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones

Not really. On the scale at which homelabs operate, I doubt you’ll see any difference at all – except what might be the significant time sink to set everything up again.

I’m not having any issues with my current setup

I’d put this firmly in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category. Mint is already a distro which is ultimately a Debian derivative. It operates more like Debian as opposed to, say, Fedora or Arch. While it can be enticing to explore the many options of Linux, the benefit isn’t clear here.

Now, distro hopping on a nonproduction system? Something where you don’t care what’s on it and you just want to experiment? That’s one of the best parts of being a Linux user. But at least do that first before even approaching breaking something that isn’t broken.

It sounds more like you want to have fun distro hopping, and believe me: I can tell you from experience that distro hopping isn’t fun if you have to rely on that machine.