Arguably, every aspect of "The Story of An Hour" is minimal and short-lived. First, there is no overuse of language or stylistic devices. As the title suggests, the story itself is quite short. Also, a quick look at all the other short-lived and minimally described elements of this story lets us know that Chopin is writing for something other than mere literary entertainment. She wants to make a point.
Short-lived elements (regarding Louise Mallard):
her happiness : she only gets to experience it while she thought her husband died.
her dreams: they surfaced as soon as she felt that she was finally free.
her hopes: same as her dreams.
her life: she is relatively young.
Minimally-described things:
her emotions: we only see the phrase, "yet, she loved him," but when did she?
the home: like your question states, minimal description is provided.
the husband: we only know that his name is Brent and that he is a relatively decent man.
her family: we know very little of her background or upbringing.
her history: we know she is a married, middle class woman but not much else.
her condition: we also know that she suffers from a heart condition, but we are not aware to what extent this is a dangerous thing for her.
All this said, it is arguable that the details of these things are minutia compared to the real problem of the story: Louise is a depressed and unhappy woman living in a time when women had limited, if any, rights in society. As such, a woman's only way to happiness was through the fortune of making a "good" (a.k.a financially stable) marriage.
Yet, the moral of this story still shows that not even having that benefit is enough to satisfy an individual's loneliness and sadness over an underachieved life. That is the point Chopin is trying to make: How can we not see, as a society, that women are as much individuals as men are. Who ever dictated that a gender is not human enough to feel, want, and desire without limits? Mirroring society through her story, Chopin makes a clear and concise point about equality. The rest of the details really do not matter in the wide scheme of things.
Therefore, in order to bring out this very unfortunate reality, Kate Chopin mutes any distracting element from the story and consistently focuses on the theme of inequality the best way she can: succinctly, subtlety, but still manages to get straight to the point.
The strict limitations of the setting mirror the strict limitations placed on women during the Victorian era, the time in which Louise Mallard lives. As Louise mentally processes the fact that her husband is dead, the first words she speaks aloud are "'free, free, free!'" Though the joy she feels is a "monstrous" one, she feels it nonetheless. She knows that her husband loved her, and she feels that she, at times, loved him. However, most tellingly, she reflects on the idea that
There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
She seems to have felt trapped in her marriage. Perhaps she never wanted to marry at all and was forced to as a result of societal expectation. Perhaps she didn't want to marry Brently but had to because there was no good, socially-acceptable reason to refuse him. Whatever the case, her marriage seems to have made her feel that she could not live for herself, that she must always give way to whatever her husband wanted, because that is what marriage demanded of Victorian women. They were forced to live relatively small lives.
Likewise, the setting is small, and it parallels the figurative "smallness" of Louise's life. She has been confined, restricted, and almost the first thing she does after learning of her husband's death is to open the window and look outside, as though his death has liberated her from confinement; she notices the birds and the trees and the clouds now. One of the main themes of the story, about the confinement marriage posed to women during this era (even when the marriage was a loving one), is further expressed by the story's setting.
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