I have had something similar happen. I salvaged at the junkyard and picked up a globe, which went into my personal inventory, not the family inventory. But once I picked up that globe it was there to stay. I could do nothing to get rid of it. I noticed other things that I had not salvaged, but just put into my inventory were also stuck. I even had a newspaper stuck. Every couple of Sim days I would have another item unusable. At all, they were just stuck. So, did you salvage? If you did then that may have caused a bug.