Re: Canned Goods
This has always been an issue for several things, sims prioritizing a further away thing with anything from seats (to read books, do homework, or anything else), toilets, sinks, and where to set food/canned goods down, among other things. It's incredibly annoying and nonsensical, and while the devs occasionally say they tweak it, the issue is either never fixed or reoccurs within a few months with some other unrelated "fix" done. Apparently, this is just not a priority for them to code sims sensibly and efficiently for basic tasks.
There are times when it gets so frustrating that I just quit playing for a week or two. I don't like having to lock my sims into rooms just to do a task to prevent them from choosing the furthest thing to do the task.