Actually you missed a step, after placing the shrub you need to click on it and select 'objects stay on move out' then save. Learned that the hard way the very first time I used it. Also I don't trust the stay all shrub to anything super precious, say great grandparents hand done portrait, I put those in inventory.

Okay. Maybe I'll try that. Will be rather irritable, but I'll try it if the other steps don't work.

Sorry that it took so long. I've tried moving them out again. And the bug is still there. However, when I moved them into a different house, the bug disappeared. But it reappeared when I moved them back into the same household. So the bag is stuck to that specific household. It might be possible to fix the issue by duplicating my actions from 2013. But I can't remember what actions I performed that caused the bag to appear. Maybe if I could remember, then I might be able to figure out what actions I need to perform in order for the bag to disappear. I think it may have something to do with me forgetting to perform a certain action that caused the bag to stay there permanently.

It took you 7 years to test something?

Well my current PC refused to instal all my expansion packs. And I'd been busy with a lot of things. So I didn't get around to finding a way around my expansion pack problem until now.

Do you have any experience with starting businesses in The Sims 2? Whether they be home businesses or community lot businesses? If so, then do you have any idea how one of my household members could have gotten a shopping bag? Maybe then it would be possible to figure out what I need to do to get the shopping bag to disappear.

I was thinking of maybe cloning the lot using a temporary copy of my save, moving my Sims out of the original lot, deleting the lot, and then moving the family (or household rather, since they aren't a family. They are four men who were assembled together to start a manufactured business) into the cloned lot.

But I REALLY don't want to do that. Since I heard that negative side effects can occur from cloning a previously occupied lot by means of the lots and houses bin. I would also rather not do that. Since it'll probably affect the lot ID.

Did you try taking him to a business and having him complete a purchase?

If you clean up the lot first, using SimPE and/or Chris Hatch's lot cleaner, the lots should be fine. As long as you don't plonk down an occupied lot, that is (those come with more issues).

Tutorial:
https://thesims2.livejournal.com/6049797.html (clone lot)
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=609188 (clean it up, includes link to CH's mod)

Haven't read through the whole topic, so no idea what you've tried or not and what advice you've already gotten - but one thing you can do if you're afraid of ruining anything is to simply try out the methods on a copy of your game (have a backup copy at hand). Then you can experiment with what works and what doesn't, without being afraid of messing anything up. If you do, you can delete the borked files, copy over a new set of files, and try again.

Wow, this thread is reopened? And you still have the glitch?
The only thing I am not sure you have not tried was having the sim go back to the business he first got the bag from.

Load up business owner and have them open their shop.
Find the glitched sim on a teleporter and teleport him to the business.
Play the business and see if he checks out. In fact if he is willing I would aim to sell him something new since another shopping bag could replace the first one and he could then check out and finally be rid of it.

Yeah, I went years without playing it. Since I was waiting to get a new PC. Which I did in 2018. But my new Windows 10 PC refused to instal anything but the base game. That was until I was introduced to the starter pack that would allow me to instal everything without having to go through the installation process of every expansion and stuff pack last year.

I think I know where he got the shopping bag from. It was either from the home business he started which has since been shut down. Or it was through the community business that his roommate and fellow manufactured business partner started. I remember him failing to check out. Or an error was forced on him. Which is how the shopping bag got stuck in the first place.

The reason I made him start a community business was so that he could obtain the rally forth. Since I wanted to take a screenshot of a Sim using one.

Longest running glitch ever? XD I think this is the only time a thread has been necromanced because the original issue was still going.

It was revived because the issue is still present. But then it's been a very long time since I've played this particular save. I was going to ping all the people that partook in this thread in a new thread. But I decided that I would be better off reviving this thread instead.

I tried moving him out, that didn't help. I tried fixing his walking style with the Sim Locomotor, that didn't help either. I would try making him buy something from a business. But I can't work out what business he would have gone to in the first place. I rarely play with businesses.

Alright, I've managed to remove the shopping bag glitch. But I had to create a clone of the original lot using the lots and houses bin with a temporary copy of the neighbourhood. And then move the household into the copy of the lot. The Sim that purchased a community lot no longer has a copy of the deed to the lot. But I found out that I can purchase a new one without difficulty.

Good to know it's fixed.

Now I can finally sleep, after seven years of insomnia worrying about this thread!

Glad you fixed it @C.Syde65 I always assumed that purchased but non-paid for items were stored as a token (inventory), but maybe I was wrong!