it's actually pretty easy: if you have an old computer or so lying around, you can throw Yunohost on it. They have excellent documentation, which guides you through some of the concepts you need to know for self-hosting, through nitty-gritty of setting up your own Yunohost box, including set up and port-forwarding on your router and they also provide a users guide for you and anyone else who might use your personal cloud. They even give you free subdomains!