I have to agree on the counting aspect. I am by no means anywhere near a minimalist. But one great video I watched on the topic, it talked more about how many of the things you own that you actually use and not about having the least items. The particular video was triggered after he had shown his closet in a video about minimalism and people were commenting about just how many clothes he had. So he went through the reasoning and while he had a lot of clothes he wore them all basically over the course of a week and washed once a week.

So I totally agreee with you, the number does not matter the usefulness is much more a key.