I've been thinking,
Please Note - English isn't my native tongue, so pardon my writing :-D (I'll try to make as much sense as I can)
Instead of the number of collected items appearing above the character, what if its shown on the left side (where the collected items are already shown)?
In my opinion, it would effectively make it more clear to seen how many items the play have harvested/mined/collected.
Case in point,
like the (poorly) edited example shows, "+/-", "number of items" and "item name" can be made to appear next to the corresponding item.
I'm suggesting this because whenever I harvest corn from my farm, numbers of collected items are shown like this,
I love your game and no offence, but I crunch numbers for a living & I rather not do it in my free time as well :-D. With that been said this is my view only and I don't know everyone playing the game would agree.