Bagpuss
Legend
True. It's also possible that if the players attach undue importance to a mundane bit of set dressing, that item could be something of a red herring left behind by a potential adversary of the party's. This could lead to some interesting role-playing as the party tries to figure out which part of the set dressing deserves their attention. Is it this item or that item? Where do we go from here?
While I agree you can have red herrings, I think often in RPGs they tend to fall flat, unless they can discover it is an actual deliberate misdirect by the villain. If it just is a misleading clue that leads to a dead end, players can feel like they have just wasted time.