Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff

by Myquillyn Smith, Lisa Wright (Narrator)

More Style, Less Stuff

Cozy Minimalism isn’t about going without or achieving a particular new, modern style. Nope. It’s simply a mindset that helps you get whatever style YOU LOVE with the fewest possible items.

You want a warm, cozy, inviting home, without using more resources, money, and stuff than needed. Why use more if you don't have to?

In Cozy Minimalist Home, accidental stylist and bestselling author Myquillyn Smith guides you step by step on making purposeful design decisions for your home. You'll have the tools to transform your home starting with what you already have, and using just enough of the right furniture and decor to create a home you're proud of in a way that honors your personal priorities, budget, and style. No more fretting when it comes to decorating your house! 

In Cozy Minimalist Home, Myquillyn Smith helps you


Realize your role as the curator of your home who makes smart, style-impacting design choices
Finally know what to focus on, and what not to worry about when it comes to your home
Discover the real secret to finding your unique style—it has nothing to do with those style quizzes
Understand how to find a sofa you won't hate tomorrow
Deconstruct each room and then re-create it step by step with a fail proof process
Create a pretty home with more style and less stuff—resulting in backwards decluttering!
Finish your home and have it looking the way you've always hoped so you can use it the way you've always dreamed 
After reading Myquillyn's first book, The Nesting Place, women everywhere were convinced that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful and they found real contentment in their homes. But how does a content imperfectionist make actual design decisions?

Cozy Minimalist Home is the answer to that question. Written for the hands-on woman who'd rather move her own furniture than hire a designer, this is the guidance she needs to finish every room of her house. With people, priorities and purpose in mind, anyone can create a beautiful home that transcends the trends.

A pretty home is nice, but a Cozy Minimalist home goes beyond pretty and sets the stage for connection, relationship, and rest.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Design, Audiobook, Interior Design, Reference, Adult

4 pages, Audiobook

First published October 1, 2018

About the author

MYQUILLYN SMITH, also known as “The Nester,” is the New York Times and Wall Street
Journal bestselling author of Welcome Home and Cozy Minimalist Home.

For the past 17 years, she’s been encouraging women to embrace their space—imperfections and all—and make it their own. Her previous homes have been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Cottages & Bungalows. She recently purchased and redecorated a 1905 Queen Anne Victorian home in Morganton, North Carolina, the inspiration for her new book House Rules.

She’s never met a home she didn’t love. Find her online at TheNester.com and on Instagram @TheNester.

Reviews

[Cale · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book used So Many Words to say just a few little things. (Seriously, where was her editor?!) Why did it take me so long to read? It was so damn wordy out of the gate that I didn't really want to pick it up to finish it after three chapters in. What made me finish it? It's due today at the library and I figured I should at least read a little further before returning it. If you are wondering if it's worth checking out, I'll save you a roughly 4 hour read with one quick review.

Favorite quote from the book didn't come until the last chapter: "A big part of our job as grown-ups is to recognize when we have enough and call it out." TRUTH. So if you feel like you have too much in your house, Smith offers a few simple steps to rid your house of clutter with an eye toward decorating:
--Quiet your room by taking *everything* out except for large furniture pieces and the things that have to stay (like if your TV is fixed to the wall).
--Add furniture pieces back trying them in different positions to make sure the room functions in the best way possible, starting with primary seating and adding in secondary seating, a few key surfaces (side tables, etc.), and necessary storage pieces.
--Layer with a *large* rug. For the love, no more tiny rugs. It has to be big.
--Add in drapes positioned high and wide to beef up those windows.
--Incorporate lamps to add ambiance, coziness, and necessary function (task lighting).
--THEN hang wall art- best to go big and not clutter stuff up with a gallery wall.
--Add small vignettes that mix texture, shape, and scale using some large pieces instead of a lot of small things. (When in doubt, get the bigger pillow or chunky, textured vase.) Don't forget to add some plants. Don't forget to designate entire surface spaces that will remain empty so your eye can rest in each room.
--Remember that holiday/seasonal decor is more than just stuff. It's also the music you play, the scents of the season (cookies or a roast in the oven), and the food you enjoy with friends. It is not always your entire collection of Santas of the World nutcrackers displayed and collecting dust for 7 weeks on every available surface throughout your home. So choose accessories that can do some double duty, like a large vase that can house seasonal evergreens/foliage or vegetation/natural elements brought in from outdoors. Think pinecones and forced forsythia branches and such. This way decorating for the seasons doesn't become a weekend event that requires placement of a bunch of crap and dusting and storing all the crap the day after the holiday or season has passed.
--Decide you have enough damn stuff that's been shipped across oceans at great cost to our planet and its underpaid factory workers from Asia that you picked up at that decor shit-show we call Hobby Lobby and STOP DECORATING ALREADY. (That's my paraphrase, anyway.)
--Have friends over and care more about them than your decorated house. The end.

The best decision OF MY LIFE was taking the time to work my way up on the holds list so I could check this book out from the library instead of purchasing it because #minimalism.

[Leah Hortin · Rating 2 out of 5]

For being a book on minimalism, it sure is wordy. I would have preferred less fluff and more bullet points. Nothing revolutionary in here; most of the tips I've picked up over the years from experience and pinterest and YoungHouseLove. I don't care for her style at all so the pictures didn't do a whole lot for me. And ironically, her finished "CoMi" room's still felt a little too busy/full to me.

[Megan Ericson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cozy Minimalist Home gives me permission to decorate the way I've always wanted to but thought I was doing something wrong.

I co-host a podcast called Minimalist Moms, so I feel like I'm expected to keep my home minimal, but when I take too much away, it feels cold and unfriendly. Plus, I'm not comfortable and that's hardly any way to live, right?

Myquillyn shows you how to make your home cozy AND minimalist. She teaches you how it's more about making your home function for you than following a certain design aesthetic.

Then, she walks you through how to decorate a room from start to finish, step-by-easy-step. And, guess what? I was doing everything in the wrong order. No wonder my rooms never felt quite right!

Her advice is as about as practical as it comes and easy for everyone to accomplish. No design degree required! My husband and I have been debating about which mirror to put over our fireplace for months but I didn't want to order it from a catalog because I would lose $100 in shipping costs to return if it wasn't right. After I finished her chapter on wall art, I ordered that mirror with confidence - and saved money!

This book has literally already paid for itself several times over!

Favorite Quotes:

- More for the sake of more is just as empty as less for the sake of less.

- Less is the gift to myself that keeps on giving.

- Every limitation has a beautiful workaround.

- One of the best parts of cozy minimalism is this odd sensation you begin to experience – one that most people never allow themselves to feel. It’s called "enough."

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Not as good as her later book "House Rules", this one nonetheless introduces the "cozy minimalism" concept. There is some excellent advice here - like shop your own home/stuff before buying new, buy fewer items but bigger/better when you do, and how to "quiet" a home. I did dock a half star for the completely unnecessary religious content - pulled me right out of this decor book.

[Nathan M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Useless. It was like a book version of when you look up a cookie recipe online and have to read someone's life story before you get to the list of ingredients. All I want is the stupid cookie recipe. All I wanted here was tips and photos of how to be a minimalist and what the ideal "look" for minimalism is. The entire book was random "stylish" pictures of rooms that still had way too much crap in them, combined with story after story of nonsense. I learned nothing from it. And I don't mean that sarcastically or anything like that. I mean it literally. I literally learned nothing. Except that it's possible to completely waste your time reading something. I could've done so many better and more useful things tonight. So not only did I pour through a completely useless book, I get to be mad about the fact that I wasted so much time doing so.

[MacKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down my favorite book so far this year. Intensely practical, methodical and easy to follow, examples of real results, and FUNNY! Loved every page and plan to genuinely use this method to decorate my home!

[Donna Ancypa Holmes · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few good ideas, implausibly stretched into a book, when it could easily have been a cover story in Real Simple.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a number of times I took pictures of paragraphs and sent them to my husband, because it felt like someone had given words to my soul. I do think that I am of the same spirit as Myquillyn Smith in terms of wanting more style and less stuff. Especially the less stuff part. GOSH I hate stuff! It drives me crazy. BUT, since I had already arrived at this conclusion before reading the book, and have also given myself freedom to get rid of stuff that I don't use and don't like, my experience reading had more to do with excitement over being validated rather than a light bulb going off in my brain.

I thought the beginning of the book was strong. Smith explains clearly how to determine styles that you like (I loved the idea of having a Pinterest reading!), why it is necessary to quiet a space (it's kind of like the feeling you get when all the Christmas decorations come down and you look around your living room with fresh eyes), and why it is important to arrange furniture and surface areas in a room first. However, as the book continued I think her editor must have fallen asleep and she slipped more into what I have determined to be influencer writing style. It's where they think that they are explaining something clearly but instead they are giving you a list of random pop culture references or "real life flaws" in an effort to seem relatable. Just because I, too, remember that movie from the 90s doesn't mean I understand what you're telling me about how to position a lamp! I also got annoyed by her constant trilling of "isn't this fun?" and her shrieking to not do her steps out of order. Once I got to the later steps her order seemed kind of anticlimactic, even though she clearly thinks it is the best thing in the world. But then again, her last step is about arranging "vignettes" aka tchotchkes aka dust-collectors, and I hate all of those things so that could have just been me. (I think I'm more of a cozy functionalist rather than a cozy minimalist.)

One major issue I would have liked for her to address is dealing with other people in your home who are not cozy minimalists. Say, for example, you're married to someone with a style quite different from your own. Some might say no style. Hypothetically, of course. Say that spouse of yours has a horrid, borderline racist, broken tchotchke that he can't part with because it has sentimental value. Say he wants to display said object in your bedroom. Still hypothetical, of course, but what would Myquillyn do? She discusses considering other people' needs, sure (clear surfaces and lighting for homework, for example), but her only information about including them in the decorating is to "warn them what you are going to do." I've tried warning my husband that I'm going to throw away that tchotchke and he still gets mad at me. Oops, I mean in theory, warning the person that you are going to throw away a beloved item of theirs because you hate it and it doesn't go with your style wouldn't go over well, right? But in all seriousness, this was very focused on one person being the decider of everything that comes in and goes out of the house, which I found to be very problematic.

[Marianna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don’t label your style, but let’s all be CoMi’s. Don’t let bloggers and Instagram define your style, but her house is just another Joanna Gaines knockoff.

[Monica H (TeaandBooks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

These past few years since we have downsized after moving four times in three years, we have been remodeling and making this last house our home. Our goal has been simple yet cozy. I haven't always known how to do that well, but I am learning thanks to The Nester (Myquillyn Smith). Her latest book, Cozy Minimalist Home is just what I have been looking for to make our living room and dining room a place of cozy rest for my family and guests.


Cozy Minimalist Home is a how to book for creating your own style in your home that is both cozy and less cluttered. Minimalism doesn't have to mean cold and empty. Instead it can be both cozy and easier to care for with less stuff to clean and move around (CoMi style). The Nester tells us how to decorate, arrange furniture, hang curtains, buy rugs, add lighting, accessorize a room, and bring color to walls. All the while you are doing these things, she shows how you can still maintain your own sense of style that makes your home uniquely yours.


I truly enjoyed this book. I worked my way through Cozy Minimalist Home as I was reading it. I have followed The Nester for years on her blog and enjoyed reading it so much. I think that is why our bedroom was already CoMi. However, because we downsized into a smaller space, I have struggled with our living room and dining room area. This book helped me make changes immediately that left us all feeling a bit more at ease. As we finish remodeling those rooms, we have a better plan for the finished product thanks to this book. I would say that one thing I wish she had a addressed is what to do with family pieces that aren't your favorite. I have been gifted some family pieces that I feel like I have to keep forever and at times that is a struggle with knowing what to do with them. Outside of that issue, (maybe I am one of the few with this struggle?), I felt like she addressed a lot of issues and I learned more than enough to pay for the cost of the book. I found a whole lot of helpful information in Cozy Minimalist Home and I would recommend it to anyone looking to make their home more cozy and to have more time for friends and loved ones to enjoy it.


I received an ARC of this book from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't familiar with this author before picking up the book, and apparently also failed to notice that it was published by Zondervan, so I was taken aback by the religiousness and sexism of this book.
Honestly, the religion stuff wasn't that intrusive, but the sexism was completely distracting.
Men don't see clutter? Sure they do, but too many of them trained to believe it's not their problem. She mentions "your husband" all the time when speaking to the reader, like she couldn't imagine any other reader for this book than a married, hetrosexual woman. Single people can't have cozy minimalist homes? It was super distracting, which is a shame because the advice is good, but the framing made the book just about unreadable.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Myquillyn Smith knows what is important in a home: it is important that it is home-y. She takes us through the steps of decorating to achieve that wonderful coziness, that wonderful simplicity, in easy steps. I especially liked how she asks us to first quiet our rooms before beginning anything. A good introduction for first-timers, I think.

[CM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually did learn quite a few things from this book. I find that most design books are full of beautiful pictures but no practical advice on how to actually get those pictures. This book was the opposite. The large majority of the pictures were often up close pictures and were cute but kind of pointless in a design book. They were mostly of one or two items like a hat on a chair, or a flower, or half a green plant on a white wall, or a macaroon or a napkin. Kind of artistic I guess, but didn't really give many ideas for actually decorating my house.


As for the actual writing in the book, I found the tips on approaching a room very helpful. Clearing out and starting from scratch and what pieces to add back and in it what order. My logical mind really related to how she approached everything in a step by step process where you cannot add something from one step until you finish the preceding step. There were however a lot of extra words. It took a very long time to get started and could definitely have been much shorter.

If you are a more logic minded person who finds it easier to create things when you have a step by step formula, I would still reccomend this book. There is a lot you can skip through and most of the pictures won't help, but she approached decorating in a way I have never seen before and I personally found it very helpful.

[Eli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Headline: local fashionable mom suddenly becomes aware she has way too much stuff, writes book about it

On a more serious note, it’s only 2hr 50min on 1.25x speed...

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful, practical, and easy read. It doesn’t make you want to go buy lots of new things but rather to see and work with what you have, which I greatly appreciate.

I also love that the emphasis isn’t solely on making a space beautiful, but that the space should serve us and the people we bring in. We shouldn’t worry about how our home looks to guests when they come over; we should be thinking about how to care for them. This can be done, though, without going through her process, as ultimately our home is not heaven and may never be “perfect”, but it is good to want our spaces to be hospitable and welcoming. To quote the last page: “You’ll know your home is a good place when you go from thinking about how to make it look better to thinking about how to make it serve better.”

[Christina DeVane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun, easy read. I haven’t read the author’s first book, but looking at her stuff online I always thought she had a cluttered look to her style. So this is her journey to decorating with bigger pieces and fewer items which I’m all about. She had some helpful advice on decorating in a certain order like furniture, rugs, drapes, and lighting before anything goes on the walls. I still don’t love her style, but I enjoyed reading this and I love how it ends- it’s not about my Home looking better, but serving us better. ❤️ 🏡

[Jackie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I grabbed this from the library and boy am I glad I did not spend any money on it. Somebody in one of my GR groups read this and liked it, and I thought "cozy minimalist" sounded like a design style I would be into.

This book is so damn frustrating to read. She will spend pages upon pages fluffing out what could be covered in a paragraph, endlessly repeating her mindless advice. It's really obvious that she's a blogger and not a professional interior designer or decorator because all of her advice is stuff that you could easily figure out by yourself. Which leads me to my biggest complaint about the whole book: the writing style.

The tone of this book is that of a wise guru handing out the secrets of life to grateful plebeians. I'm not sure if she thinks her audience is too stupid to figure this stuff out on their own or if she just assumes that this is the first design book anyone has read. *A LOT* of the writing boils down to "now I know this seems totally impossible, but trust me, and don't skip ahead, just do it my way, and then PRESTO your perfect room will reveal itself to you. Isn't it amazing?!" It's aggravating at best and downright insulting at its worst.

The book is also a bit misandrous; Myquillyn clearly thinks of men as messy, clutter-causing animals akin to poorly trained dogs that must be designed around. They are people? Women are also hard on rugs? Everyone should buy durable couches no matter what gender of kids they have? It's a weird theme that runs through the book. {Sidenote: she also brings up God as the ultimate designer and how making our houses look nice is like God making the garden of Eden for us...and that is also a weird theme to have in an otherwise secular how-to book.}

I didn't get anything out of this, and I wasn't very impressed with her design style. It still looked too cluttered and busy to me; honestly sometimes I thought the Before picture was better than the After. Plus, it all looked very generic. I like Target too, but branch out a little.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure why I do this to myself. I picked this book up three weeks ago and I am now currently sitting in a living room with nothing in it but a sofa, a coffee table, and a cat tree. I'm waiting for the room to tell me what kind of furniture it wants in it. (The cats insisted the cat tree was nonnegotiable). On one hand, I can't get into my office because that's where all the extra furniture is and there are boxes of books in the guest bathroom. On the other hand, my living room floor is cleaner than it's been since I moved, since I can get to all of it now.
At any rate, this is a cute book. I wish Smith had talked more about "temporary fixes." She tells you it's okay to use them when you can't do exactly what you want to do, but she doesn't offer many examples. For example, according to her I need a BIG rug and some window treatments, and I really can't do anything else with the room until I have them, but that's hardly in my budget right now, so what do I do until then? I've ordered in her other book, The Nesting Place, from the library to see if it talks more about that, since its subtitle is "It Doesn't Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful."
Her style isn't mine, but there are some good tips in here. I have realized that my living room looks a hell of a lot better without a bunch of crap shoved into it, and also that I need to get rid of my tiki bar. It's a cool bar, but it was my ex's, and it goes with absolutely nothing else I own. There's also some crap tips, but that's pretty normal for these books. Also, just FYI, there's a touch of religiousness that pops up, and also she's one of those decorators who likes words written in cursive on canvases--but she never says YOU should like a big picture that says LIVE LAUGH LOVE, so it's mostly just the pictures, which are of her house.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve gotten 35 pages in and am not sure I can wait til October to read the rest. ☺️ Having followed Myquillen for a good part of her blogging journey, I resonate with her quest to become a “Minister of Coziness” but have also fallen into the same trap of a “Manager of Stuff” instead. It’s a beautiful thing when you find your people, and she is certainly one of them. Her beautiful and comfortable home, featured in gorgeous pictures through the book, is one that inspires in the true sense of the word- to fluff my own neat, to enjoy my own home, and to use it to connect others. After recently moving from our small, 90 year old home with lots of character to a newer build, more spacious home, I’ve struggled with how exactly to make this new house feel like home to my little family, without adding to our stress with lots of things and distractions. I love how the idea of Cozy Minimalism is presented and it’s the perfect fit for those of us who love color and beauty in our homes, think deeply about what it means to use our homes as tools to share the Gospel with others, and who want to find respite from the culture of busyness and stress that seems to shape everywhere else. I look forward to finishing this book!

(I received an advanced readers copy of the first chapter to write this review.)

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm interested in clutter/minimalism but this isn't the book for me.

It has a very American slant (understandably), jarring references to God as a reason why you should declutter and an expectation that you're on Pinterest/read design magazines. It seems unrealistic in the UK, where houses are much smaller, to empty a room of everything but seating/TV when there's not a spare barn outside to store everything in.

It has some good points about the size of objects. It's a great book to read before you move into an empty house, not while you're living in a small house without a lot of spare room.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to really love this book and I did for the first chapter or two. Beyond those chapters, the book became a step-by-step guide to her styling process. I was hoping for a greater focus on the philosophy and mentality behind “cozy minimalism,” a phrase I love. At the end of the book, the before and after pictures didn’t strike me as drastically different, aside from the scale of decorative objects. The author seems to be a thoughtful and purposeful person, this specific book just didn’t resonate with me.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author's home design is neither cozy nor minimalist. Giant antlers on the wall sticking out ready to poke someone's eye out? Not cozy. Eight large glass vases that take up the entire table? Not minimalist. Moving and photographing each chair you own in a single white corner of your house is just plain cheating. Also, people who organize their books by color are ridiculous humans. That is all.

[Sharon Huether · Rating 5 out of 5]

To decorate our home....start with an empty room.
These are easy steps to follow.

1. primary seating.
2. secondary seating.
3. layer with a large rug.
4.lighting.
5.wall- art.
6.a few accessories
Enjoy.
It's important not to skip the sequence.

[Mir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Publishers need to stop giving bloggers book deals. A book should not be a mashup of blog articles.

There is nothing minimalist about this author’s style. I don’t need multiple matching throw pillows thank you very much. I am not into books that recommend Pinterest parties to ‘find my style’ then cram a few chapters about how what I like is wrong. There were more ridiculous things in this book than I care to quote here.

[Kaytee Cobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

So practical. Myquillin makes it so easy to start over, identify exactly what you need, and create a space you truly love. I read it cover to cover, now I plan to get started, slow down, and actually follow the steps. Because Myquillin truly makes me think I can. Love it. This book will not leave my shelves.

[Enola Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a beautiful book with some practical, inspirational ideas and the freeing concept of being both a little bit Hygge and a little bit Marie Kondo, but utilising these labels as tools, not laws, to curate your space intentionally.

[Natalie Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. There are many helpful ideas in this book but much of it seemed like common sense. Yet, I did like the idea of “quieting” the room by taking everything out and then adding things back in, in certain steps, to see/feel what works best.

[Dan Banana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Starts off with ideas, then pointlessly brings up religion and too many I, me, mine things. Tries to make a word up for cozy minimalist, having the audio book I think it's commee, another 'me'. Didn't like it...if that wasn't apparent.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Myquillyn's order for designing a room and the reasoning behind it. It makes a lot of sense and really does help create rooms you're happier with.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure if this book would be for me because I don't want to be consumerist and materialistic, nor do I want to chase some idea of a perfectly styled home for myself. But it was a breath of fresh air - a way of approaching how each room of the home looks AND functions, and layering in just enough of what's needed for the room to feel done. And beautiful! It really is a minimalist way of approaching home decorating that also understands the importance of aesthetics in bringing us peace and pleasure in our homes. I'm convinced.