You know, when people talk about minimalist decorating these days, they make it sound like some trendy lifestyle choice. For me, it wasn’t a choice at all – it was survival. After Patricia died and I was drowning in forty years of accumulated stuff in our four-bedroom Scottsdale house, I had to figure out how to live again. Turns out, learning to live with less taught me how to actually enjoy my space for the first time in decades.
I’m not going to pretend I was some design expert who planned this whole transformation. Hell, I was an accountant who couldn’t even match his socks half the time. But going through the process of decluttering our entire life together, then moving to my two-bedroom condo, I accidentally discovered what all these minimalist design articles talk about. The difference is, I learned it through necessity, not from some magazine.
The thing about clutter – and I mean real clutter, not just a few extra throw pillows – is that it becomes visual noise. I never understood that phrase until I was sitting in our living room six months after Patricia passed, surrounded by stacks of books neither of us had read, decorative items we’d collected over the years, and furniture we’d bought because we thought we needed it. Every surface was covered with something. Every corner held stuff we’d forgotten about. It wasn’t just messy; it was suffocating.
When the estate sale company came to help sort through Patricia’s things, the woman running it – her name was Susan, sweet lady from Tempe – she took one look at our house and said, “Honey, this isn’t just about your wife’s belongings. This whole house needs breathing room.” She was right. We’d filled every space because we could, not because we should have.
Starting the decluttering process was brutal, I won’t lie. I began with one drawer in the kitchen – just one drawer – because looking at the whole house made me want to give up before I started. That drawer had three can openers (why did we need three?), rubber bands from newspapers we’d stopped getting years ago, and at least a dozen pens that didn’t work. Took me an hour to clean out one drawer. But when I opened it the next day and could actually find what I needed, I got it.
The sorting system Susan taught me was simple: keep, donate, sell, trash. I added a fifth category – “ask the kids” – for things I couldn’t decide on. My daughter Karen came over one Saturday and we went through the living room together. She picked up this ceramic elephant we’d had on the mantle for probably fifteen years and said, “Dad, do you even like this thing?” I realized I’d stopped seeing it years ago. It was just there, taking up space, collecting dust.
Here’s what nobody tells you about decluttering – it’s not the big obvious stuff that’s hard to get rid of. It’s the little things that seem harmless on their own but add up to chaos. The stack of magazines you’re going to read someday. The decorative bowl that holds nothing but looks nice (until it’s covered in dust and random receipts). The extra throw pillows that make the couch look “complete” but mean you can’t actually sit comfortably.
Once I got serious about it, I developed my own system. If I hadn’t used something in a year, it went. If it didn’t serve a purpose or make me genuinely happy to look at, it went. That ceramic elephant? Gone. The decorative books we bought to fill the bookshelf? Donated. The third coffee table in the living room that we walked around every day but never actually used? Sold on Facebook Marketplace for forty bucks.
The furniture decisions were the hardest part. Patricia and I had accumulated pieces over decades – the dining room set we bought when we got our first house, the extra chairs for hosting parties we rarely had anymore, the entertainment center built for a TV technology that didn’t exist anymore. Most of it was good quality, still functional, but it was furniture for a life we weren’t living anymore.
When I moved to the condo, I had to be ruthless about what came with me. Two bedrooms, one living area, small kitchen. I kept the pieces I actually used daily – my recliner (the good one, not the backup), the kitchen table where I eat breakfast, the dresser that held clothes I actually wore. Everything else had to go. It was terrifying and liberating at the same time.
What surprised me was how much easier it became to keep the place clean once there was less stuff to manage. In the old house, cleaning meant moving things around, dusting dozens of decorative objects, organizing stuff into neat piles. Now I can vacuum the whole condo in twenty minutes, dust in ten. There’s nothing extra to deal with.
The natural light thing happened by accident but made a huge difference. Our old house had heavy curtains in every room – Patricia liked them because they looked formal. The condo came with basic blinds, and I never got around to replacing them with curtains. Turns out, I love having the Arizona sunshine streaming in. Makes the whole place feel bigger and more alive. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best ones.
I added a few plants because my granddaughter Emma said the place looked “too beige.” She was eight and brutally honest. We went to Home Depot together and picked out three plants she promised were “impossible to kill” – a snake plant for the living room, a pothos for the kitchen counter, and some kind of succulent for the bedroom windowsill. She was right about them being low-maintenance, and they do make the place feel more alive. Plus, Emma likes to check on them when she visits, which makes them worth having for that reason alone.
The color scheme in my place isn’t minimalist because I planned it that way – it’s neutral because I’m a widowed guy who doesn’t trust himself with decorating decisions. But it works. Everything is some shade of beige, white, or brown, with the green from the plants and the blue Arizona sky outside the windows adding color. It’s calm. Peaceful. Nothing clashes because there isn’t enough stuff to clash.
What I’ve learned is that minimalist decorating, at least the way I accidentally did it, isn’t about following rules or creating some perfect Instagram-worthy space. It’s about only keeping things that serve your actual life. My coffee table holds my coffee cup, the remote, and whatever book I’m reading. That’s it. No decorative tray with objects arranged just so. No stack of coffee table books nobody reads. Just the things I use.
The biggest surprise has been how much I enjoy my space now. In the old house, I felt like a visitor in my own home – there was so much stuff everywhere that I never felt comfortable, never felt like I could just relax. Now I wake up in the morning and the first thing I see is my clean bedroom with the plant on the windowsill and sunlight coming through the blinds. It’s peaceful. It’s mine.
My kids were worried I’d made the place too sparse, too sad. But when they come visit now, they actually relax too. We can play board games on the kitchen table without having to clear off a bunch of mail and random objects first. The grandkids can spread out their toys in the living room without having to worry about knocking over some decorative whatever. It’s a home for living, not just looking at.
I’m not saying everyone needs to lose their spouse and downsize to figure this out. But I am saying that if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your own home, if you spend more time managing your stuff than enjoying your space, maybe it’s time to try living with less. Start small – one drawer, one closet, one room. See how it feels to have space to breathe. You might surprise yourself.
The peace that comes from having a truly simple, uncluttered home isn’t something you can buy or arrange your way into. It comes from making hard choices about what really matters and having the courage to let go of everything else. At 67, after losing the most important person in my life, I can tell you that stuff doesn’t bring comfort the way you think it will. But a space that reflects your actual life, your actual needs, your actual peace? That’s worth more than all the decorative objects in the world.
Frank’s a widowed retiree from Phoenix learning that less really is more. After decades of accumulation, he’s simplified his home and his life—sharing real stories about grief, gratitude, and living lighter in retirement without losing what matters