The elephant in the room when it comes to inventory management is that while there is a gigantic potential margin of improvement, no sorting option in itself will ever solve the issue completely, because the issue is: there's too much useless/redundant shit that can end up filling our bags...
And we could frankly do without a good portion of it.
I think the abundance of trash loot is Larian's way of trying to make the game world more immersive. And sadly while they are focusing on a minor detail like having worthless plates, spoons and quills as something you can pick up, they are missing the big picture of what makes an immersive game world. Night/day, gameplay that matches the narrative and visual style, consistency of style etc.
I hope they would drastically cut the amount of trash loot and empty containers in this game.
One kind of fun use for trash loot comes to mind in the form of the Animate Objects spell that could let you weaponize some cutlery or other worthless objects. But even that spell could be made work without having those items flood containers and inventories.
