children also wear out clothing quicker than adults in my experience, this balances that transition from size to size a bit -- but are you proposing that one throws out their wardrobe when they change locations?

That seems incredibly wasteful to me, especially since clothing doesn't really take much packing room unless your wardrobe is huge or fragile -- and if you have a huge & fragile wardrobe then we get back down to the idea that one should live a bit more sparingly to reduce the need for recycling in the first place.