After playing the game for a long time I notice that time has somewhat shifted so that the villagers are working during the night and not going to sleep. This results in problems with eating mechanics as well as general confusion in the priorities with the result being that certain high priority jobs are skipped entirely.
A factor may be that I never have my character sleep so if that is a reset mechanic and “garbage collection mechanic” then it is not being triggered.
To fix it I have found if I save and exit then upon my reload then All the villagers immediately return home to sleep and then the cycle is corrected going forward