Can you call it "housekeeping" if you don't take out the trash?

I'm supposed to be modifying a feature that honeycombs an entire web application that's the work of many years and programmers. But fewer than a dozen web pages in, I've had to send out two emails asking whether I'm wasting my time on obsolete pages. I'm in no position to cast stones about housekeeping, however: "My" application has the same disease.

Which prompts me to wonder whether that's only a problem where I work, or whether other multi-application shops suffer from the same pack-rat ethos. What I do know is that the source control tools are a step behind when it comes to cleaning house. IMO, they tend to encourage that behavior. Ideally, it'd be nice to see more intelligent source repositories that help you figure out dependencies, flag potentially orphaned files, and--probably most importantly--make it painless to archive obsolete code as well as restore it if it wasn't, in fact, quite the cruft you thought it was...before you broke the build.

Sigh I might as well wish for world peace and prosperity. Oh, and a pony too. Unless, of course, I knuckle down and write the software myself. Then again, I know where all my code is, right? ;-)