How To Have A Cozy Minimalist Home - Organised Pretty Home

I have been following Myquillyn Smith aka The Nester for a number of years now and I LOVED the first home decorating book she came out with, The Nesting Place.

Cozy Minimalist Home

This new book, Cozy Minimalist Home, continues the Nester’s story with tips and practical ideas about how to create a beautiful home with less stuff. It comes out of Myquillyn’s recent experience of downsizing with her husband and teenage boys to a small country cottage of their own, after many years of renting.

Myquillyn describes what happened when they half unpacked their belongings due to a massive kitchen renovation. One room, the living room, was deliberately kept sparse during the kitchen remodel.

I started to appreciate walls with less stuff, the invitation of a cleared-off surface, and the quiet beauty of a home that had only what we needed… having space in the house somehow magically translated into the feeling that I had space in my life…

Somehow my house became a quiet place even in the midst of remodeling. Isn’t that crazy? Our home didn’t even have a kitchen… all my beloved stuff was packed away, and yet for the first time, in a long time, home felt like a place of rest.
Myquillyn Smith, Cozy Minimalist Home

What is Cozy Minimalism?

During the previous years of renting, Myquillyn realized she had become an expert “cozifier”. That is, trying to hide the things she didn’t like about her home by transforming spaces with stuff. The more her home felt unfinished or not right the more she tried to fix the room with more stuff.

O.K. I couldn’t relate directly to being a hoarder of home decor items. Heck, I often struggle with what to put on my walls, I can’t decide so I leave them blank and rooms never feel finished.

But I do like to collect pretty things and rescue projects. And before I decluttered my whole home, I did have an issue with a growing collection of secondhand chairs and furniture projects I was going to fix up but never did!

Thankfully, Myquillyn Smith is talking to both groups of us in her book Cozy Minimalist Home. Those are us who need to learn to cozy a room and those of us who are looking for help to use less stuff in a room when decorating.

That is what “Cozy Minimalism” is all about!

I was stuck in some awkward design space between cozy and minimalist. I was a Cozy Minimalist…

For years, I felt a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t minimalist enough… At the same time, I was concerned that our home wasn’t welcoming, warm or cozily inviting… the problem was I saw the value in both sides.

I want to live in a world where there is room for plenty. Where meaningful collections are admired and loved and passed down through generations… where there is more than enough room to find a seat and get comfortable…

But I also love the invitation that a cleared-off surface offers, the freedom not to hang something on every wall just because it’s blank, the discipline to know when to stop, and the reality that living with less makes my life so much easier…

I needed both the cozy and the minimal in my home, just like I saw it in the lives of the people and homes I admired most.
Myquillyn Smith, Cozy Minimalist Home

How To Create A Cozy Minimalist Home

I love that this book is not solely focused on the concept of just having “less” in your home through radical decluttering. While Myquillyn starts with her clutter story, it then leads on to very practical decorating advice on how to have more style, with less stuff.

Cozy Minimalist Bedroom

Reading this book was very timely for me, as I was in the middle of a green master bedroom makeover. The purpose of which was to style or decorate our master bedroom so it felt and was finished!

Me: Help I still don’t know what to put on my bedroom walls. See, my issue – bare walls!

Advice from Cozy Minimalist Home: Hang your curtains or drapes up before you decided on how to decorate the walls.

Me: End of panic and yes, the room does look less naked with pretty window drapes!

Me Again: Should I get this canvas frame? Should I go for that lamp or this lamp?

Advice from the Cozy Minimalist Home: Instead of filling you room with lots of smalls, go for less stuff but bigger in size and impact.

Me: I like that vase… Oh, no too small! Canvas frame… not enough impact with one piece. Need to look for something bigger!

And much more…

The less stuff, more style decorating ideas were such a helpful guideline when shopping for my master bedroom.

Best of all, the Nester describes step by step the whole process of transforming a room in your home so there is enough stuff (minimalism) and yet works well for you and your family (coziness).

Why I Recommend Cozy Minimalist Home

Cozy Minimalist Home is the decluttering book for those of you who want to have beautiful and comfortable cozy home but with less things.

It’s for you if you feel like everything “sparks joy”, and yet don’t want to feel like an overwhelmed caretaker of all the stuff in your own home.

This books is also for you if who want to learn how to combine function or practicality with I still want my home to look nice.

And for those of you who have a ever growing collection of pretty decor items (It was on sale!!) and yet still feel like their home is not finished. This book will help you know how to decorate or style your home so that it feels “enough”!

Would you say you are a cozy minimalist?

More Cozy Minimalism…