Usually, desktop environments come with a lot of software, like a graphical file browser, games, something to display the content of a directory on the wallpaper (the "Desktop" itself), etc. that I don't need, so I prefer to install only what I need (and concerning graphical software, that is only openbox, xfce4-panel, emacs, rxvt-unicode, inkscape, gimp, and iceweasel).

But in a sens you are right, it's like I composed my own minimal desktop environment :).