My parents have a basement overflowing of stuff that is full of potential utility, so I think that the joy aspect is to provide a different view point so people let go more easily.
True. But the same qualifier could be used for joy. Things could have potential for providing joy, they're just not providing joy right now.
I guess, if I had "too many things", I'd probably set some parameters and get rid of unnecessary duplicates, broken things unlikely to get repaired and things unlikely to be used in any significant capacity in the foreseeable future -knowing that one may possibly have to reacquire something one disposed of.
Potential utility is different to actual utility though. Is that stuff actually useful to them right now? Or in general? If the answer is no then it has zero utility.
