When should you use "choose/decide" before an infinitive?

Have you ever seen a sentence like this one?

• He decided to go to the store.

How about this one?

• She chose to ignore the ringing phone.

'Decide to + verb' and 'choose to + verb' are examples of redundant language. You don't need to indicate that someone decided to do something. Simply stating that they performed the action is clear enough.

These rewrites are much better:

• He went to the store.
• She ignored the ringing phone.