That's a problem The Sims had since the first game.
When your sims can afford better furniture you only buy the most expensieve stuff for the stats and avoid the cheap one cause of the penalties.
There's a lot of cheap stuff I like but never use cause I don't want negative moodlets or have to deal with the stuff breaking down often.
Wish there was like a designer tool like the Transmogrification system in World of Warcraft. Allowing us to pay some simoleons and letting us choose the appearance of a cheaper model.
For example I buy the §10,000 stove but pay to modify it to look like the cheapest stove and get to keep the stats of the fancy stove.
This would not only encourage us to decorate with cheaper appliances/furniture but like you said it would make the stuff on newer packs useful.
There's so much new stuff I never use cause the stats are lower than the older items. I usually buy the cheapest furniture and by the time I think about upgrading it, I have enough simoleons to buy the most expensive stuff which usually came with base game.
On the other hand it wouldn't make sense to have all the newer packs be 10's on all stats just cause it's a newer pack, so a "redesign" tool would be awesome.
