When I first moved into my flat in Žižkov, I spent the first week just looking at it. High ceilings with old plaster details. Parquet floors that creaked in three specific spots. A kitchen that had clearly been renovated sometime in the 1980s and never touched since. The apartment had a personality — accumulated, layered, a little worn — and I was not sure what to do with it.
Most minimalism advice assumes you are starting with a blank canvas: white walls, open floor plans, IKEA-ready surfaces. Prague apartments are rarely like that. They come with history, and that history is part of what makes them interesting. The challenge is not to strip everything out, but to make deliberate choices about what stays.
Start with what bothers you, not what looks good in photos
The most common mistake people make when trying to simplify their home is starting with aesthetics. They look at minimalist interiors online — usually Scandinavian, usually photographed with professional lighting — and try to replicate the look. This almost never works, because the look is a byproduct of a process, not the starting point.
A more useful question: what in your home creates friction? What do you move around constantly because it has no real place? What do you avoid dealing with because it is too complicated? Start there. The things that bother you daily are more important than the things that photograph badly.
In my Žižkov flat, the answer was the hallway. It had become a dumping ground — bags, shoes, a broken umbrella, a bicycle I had not ridden in two years. Clearing it took one afternoon and immediately changed how I felt about coming home. That is the kind of concrete improvement that matters more than any aesthetic transformation.
Work with the architecture, not against it
Prague apartments from the First Republic era — roughly 1918 to 1938 — often have features that are genuinely beautiful: decorative ceiling mouldings, tall windows, original wooden floors. These are not clutter. They are the bones of the space, and they deserve to be visible.
The practical implication is that you need less furniture, not more. A room with a beautiful parquet floor does not need a rug covering most of it. A room with high ceilings and tall windows does not need heavy curtains blocking the light. The architecture itself provides visual interest — your job is to get out of its way.
The architecture itself provides visual interest — your job is to get out of its way.
This is different from the minimalism of a modern apartment, where the walls and floors are neutral by design and you need to add texture and warmth. In an older Prague flat, the warmth is already there. You are editing, not decorating.
The one-year rule for Czech apartments
The standard advice is to get rid of anything you have not used in six months. I find that too aggressive for Prague, where seasonal variation is significant. You genuinely do not use your winter coat in July, and you genuinely do need it in January. A more useful rule here is one year: if you have not used something in a full cycle of seasons, it probably does not belong in your home.
There are exceptions. Sentimental objects, tools for specific tasks, things you keep for guests. But the one-year rule catches most of the genuine clutter: the kitchen gadgets used once, the books you will never reread, the clothes that fit poorly but felt too expensive to discard.
Where to take things in Prague
One of the practical advantages of living in Prague is that there are good options for giving things a second life. The ReUse centres operated by the city accept a wide range of items. The second-hand market at Holešovice market runs on weekends and is a reasonable place to sell or swap. For books specifically, the second-hand bookshops in Vinohrady and Žižkov are worth visiting.
The point is not just to get rid of things, but to feel good about where they go. Knowing that a coat you no longer wear will be worn by someone else makes it easier to let go of it.
What to keep
Minimalism is not about having as little as possible. It is about having what you actually use and what genuinely matters to you. In practice, this means being honest about the difference between things you keep because they are useful and things you keep because you feel guilty about getting rid of them.
The objects worth keeping in a Prague home tend to be the ones with real quality — a good cast iron pan, a well-made wooden chair, a lamp that gives decent light. These things last, they work well, and they do not need to be replaced. The objects worth letting go are usually the ones that were cheap, bought impulsively, and have been quietly accumulating in corners ever since.
- Keep things you use at least once a month
- Keep things with genuine sentimental value — not guilt, but actual meaning
- Keep things that are difficult or expensive to replace when needed
- Let go of duplicates, broken items you keep meaning to fix, and things kept out of obligation
The ongoing practice
Simplifying a home is not a one-time project. It is a habit of paying attention — noticing when things accumulate, asking whether new purchases are genuinely needed, and making small adjustments over time rather than waiting for a major overhaul.
In a Prague apartment, this ongoing attention also means noticing what the space is telling you. When a room feels heavy or cluttered, something has shifted. When it feels right, you have probably found a balance that works for how you actually live — not how you think you should live.
That balance is different for everyone. The goal is not a particular aesthetic. It is a home that supports your life rather than complicating it.