From my reading it seems to be his objection to her method and whether "joy" is the right metric/method for determining if something stays. While I know, from

From my reading it seems to be his objection to her method and whether "joy" is the right metric/method for determining if something stays. While I know, from experience, what he says is true I still think that Kondo has a better system for most people. I'll do my best to explain what I've gotten from the show. I think Kondo's approach is actually very simple and focused on a single thing: Keep your home tidy. Her job in a sense is convince people with a problem to take steps to solve that problem which often involves getting rid of things, but not always. It's actually building habits to keep things organized and realizing when something is no longer important and therefore doesn't justify the work needed to keep it in it's proper place. She starts with clothing, which often is plentiful and easily to identify some vague person definition of "joy." Pure utilitarianism isn't right for everyone and this allows the person to determine that on their own. You can see this in the show as people go through their clothes it's hard at first but it provides a bunch of opportunities to find obvious "yes"/"no"s to the joy question. The genius I find is that she starts with clothing and leaves sentimental items for the end after you've gained experience determining what "joy" really means to you. As well as the act of "thanking" items which once practiced you can do at the harder steps more naturally and not feel guilty about getting rid of things which are meaningful, but not needed anymore. Touching the items provides some safety by saving things which you might actually get rid of, but just can't. It makes the process much less risky. Later on, by continuing to use the method occasionally, you might realize that this actually doesn't bring you joy anymore, but now you're able to accept this and remove the item. We're trying to be happy here, not perfect. The genius of the method is how many points of it are designed to gradually gain experience to keeping things tidy while minimizing the overwhelming feelings and riskiness that one can feel when getting rid of things. Which makes for a system that even those with the least willpower and discipline can gain something from.