These questions all need answers that are specific to the individual.

Kitchen stuff, clothing, linens, etc...
it all depends on your personal lifestyle.

Here is one example of how I decide on "how many blouses do I need to keep?".

With no closet hanging spaces in this house, I keep my blouses folded in a dresser drawer.

I keep all of them in this one drawer, that is their allotted space.
The drawer easily holds 40 folded blouses.
I need blouses to wear with jeans or skirts and for different seasons.
I do NOT need 40 blouses to meet my needs.
I keep it down to 25, give or take.
When I bring home a new blouse I look through my blouses and try to find one that I can let go of.

We have to consider the space where we store our things along with our own personal needs.

:)

Clothing is not a "one size fits all" (pun intended) issue. You have a juxtaposition of life style, space and quantity of items.

If you work in a downtown office building or a sales job you may need a lot of suit type dress clothes. If you farm or drive a dump truck you need jeans. If you play in an orchestra or go to a lot of social events, you may need evening clothes. Many of us don't, and don't. You will have to translate some of that into the equivalent of women's clothing.

In his blog, Brooks Palmer indicates that he basically asks his clients questions like Do you like this, will you wear it, or can you let it go. One of his more fun questions (which most folks on this board don't agree with asking) is: "If this was food, would you eat it?" A little different way to identify clothing that is meaningful to you. I would guess that if you have a lot of clothes, you could make a first pass through looking for worn things, things that no longer fit and things that you totally abhor but are keeping because they were bargains. (Like some of my 20 year old neckties from when I wore suits.)

You would then be in a much better position to make another sorting run thinking about your work, casual and social clothing needs and the space you have to store them.

Does anyone know of a place where we can get questions asked. I've gotten to the point where I can throw things away now, but I have no idea of what's actually needed to keep. What do we need to have a running kitchen? I own way too many pots and pans and dishes but how many do I keep? How many outfits does a woman needs? I know this is silly, but when I was younger, and up to 40, I never had more than 3 ooutfits to my name and now suddenly I have a whole house full of clothes and don't know what to keep. That clothes question is really my most pressing question.