I’ve turned off nearly everything in my Emacs. Fullscreen, no scrollbars, minimal frame borders, modeline hidden. My only sadness is that you can’t completely reclaim the echo area when it’s not in use. But one thing this has always helped me ensure is that if I want something, I learn how to go there, directly. No scrolling around and rummaging.
I haven't tried it recently, so it's quite possible it's broken but this package has an autohide behavior for the echo area: https://github.com/honmaple/emacs-maple-echoarea You might be able to adapt it.
