Designing a Life Around Less

by Michael Nikolaou

I’ve always believed that a home reveals its values. Not just in the books on the shelves or the light fixtures chosen, but in what’s left undone. The corner still needing plaster. The drawer that sticks. The way morning sun hits the kitchen floor. These things speak.

When Jeremy and I began restoring the house, we were ambitious. Open floor plans, second-story deck, radiant heat. We had spreadsheets, vision boards, late-night arguments over tile. But as the months wore on, we started asking different questions. What do we need to feel at peace? What brings life to our days? The deck never got built. The radiant heat became wool socks and shared quilts. And somewhere in the letting go, the house began to feel like home.

Designing a life around less doesn’t mean absence. It means intention. I still work, though fewer hours. I still deliver babies, though I no longer chase the adrenaline of it. I still write by hand, because the slow scrawl steadies me. I’ve traded full clinic days for walks with Titus, coffee with med students, and the sacred luxury of time.

Less isn’t about scarcity. It’s about spaciousness.

And that shift didn’t come easily. For years, I equated worth with work. To matter was to be needed. To be essential. And in the clinic, there was always someone needing something. But I began to notice—I was there, but I wasn’t with them. My mind darted. My body ached. My spirit… tired. So I started to pare back. Gently. Unevenly. With fear, and then with grace.

Now, our life moves slower. The house is never done. The schedule is never full. We cook from scratch when we can, listen to records on the porch, and host impromptu dinners where the chairs don’t match. And in that simplicity, I’ve found presence again. Presence not as performance, but as posture.

A life designed around less doesn’t mean living small. It means making room—for breath, for beauty, for becoming. And that, to me, is abundance.

- Michael