title: node_modules folder too large
body: <p>I've been using Gulp for quite a while and either I didn't notice it took this much space from the beginning or the sizes have been growing.</p>
  <p>I only use it for very normal front-end work. For example, this is the request part of my <code>gulpfile.js</code>:</p>
  <pre class="lang-js prettyprint-override"><code>var gulp         = require('gulp'),
      autoprefixer = require('gulp-autoprefixer'),
      browserSync  = require('browser-sync'),
      concat       = require('gulp-concat'),
      copy         = require('gulp-copy'),
      del          = require('del'),
      htmlmin      = require('gulp-htmlmin'),
      merge        = require('merge-stream'),
      streamqueue  = require('streamqueue'),
      cleancss     = require('gulp-clean-css'),
      gulpif       = require('gulp-if'),
      newer        = require('gulp-newer'),
      imgmin       = require('gulp-imagemin'),
      plumber      = require('gulp-plumber'),
      postcss      = require('gulp-postcss'),
      order        = require('gulp-order'),
      rename       = require('gulp-rename'),
      runSequence  = require('run-sequence'),
      sass         = require('gulp-sass'),
      sourcemaps   = require('gulp-sourcemaps'),
      uglify       = require('gulp-uglify'),
      uncss        = require('gulp-uncss');
  </code></pre>
  <hr />
  <p>Now, according to <code>du -sh</code>, node_modules weighs 2.2GB which I think is way too much. I wanted to dig a bit deeper so I looked all root modules:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/SVtcQ.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/SVtcQ.png" alt="DaisyDisk look at a regular node_modules/ folder" /></a></p>
  <hr />
  <p>I'm probably being naive here but I'm just expecting some javascript functionality, I don't see how or why these modules, especially the top ones, can be so large in size.</p>
  <p>Is this just how Gulp is designed? Am I doing it backwards? Can I improve this (besides not using it/those)?</p>