The item kept for visitors may be occupying comfort its owner needs daily.

Reserving the good things for guests can leave the household with the worse ones. The comfortable room kept ready, the chair nobody sits in, the towels that never come out, the crockery waiting for an occasion: each is comfort held back from the person who lives there daily, on behalf of visitors who arrive twice a year. The logic feels like hospitality and works out as self-denial. Nobody coming to visit would want it that way.

Use one reserved thing tomorrow with nobody watching. If a whole room is kept in that condition, ask whether the household needs it more than the calendar does.