I don’t think I change anything except the monospace font nowadays
Which font do you use?
It works great and gets out of the way.
I think that that’s why some Gnome users just stick with it. I personally don’t want to customize anything, if possible. I don’t even want to concern myself with the DE at all if possible. Any time I spend on the DE is time I don’t spend doing the things I actually want to do. But that’s the beauty of Linux: everyone can use whatever fits their needs best, be it Gnome, KDE, xfce or anything else.