It's important to put her focus on getting rid of stuff into context: Ms. Kondo is a "tidying consultant" whose clients are mostly affluent people that can't ev

It's important to put her focus on getting rid of stuff into context: Ms. Kondo is a "tidying consultant" whose clients are mostly affluent people that can't even get started on tidying up in any meaningful way because they simply have more stuff than storage. She tells stories of people throwing out 20, 30, 50 bulging full-size garbage bags of excess stuff - these are people with a lot of money and a lot of accumulated clothes and possessions, and who live in homes large enough to contain it but not organize it. They are also affluent enough to be able to err on the side of getting rid of too much stuff during an enthusiastic round of cleaning. Ms. Kondo exhorts her readers not to buy in bulk in order to avoid clutter - it's not like you need to be super-wealthy to pass up the cost benefits of buying in bulk, but her advice is not meant for people who are just scraping by or for whom the tradeoff of space-for-money makes sense.