I have four receptacles in my family room that I just replaced. These receptacles used to be half-hot. One of the previous owners converted them to always-hot by removing and capping the wires in the switch box.
The switch is now a part of a 3-way that controls a set of pendant lights. They left the old receptacles in place when they bypassed the switch so with the tab broken off, the only way to make them always-hot was by leaving the switch wire (red in my case) attached to the receptacle. Because the new receptacles still have the tab in place, I no longer needed the (red) switch wire so I capped it and shoved it in the back of the box on each receptacle.
Now that the receptacles are replaced in this room, I’ve moved on to the switches. Although the receptacles are no longer switched, the line started in the switch box so the wires are still there (as expected) but spliced/capped and shoved in the back. Currently, the (red) switch wire is spliced with the receptacles’ (black) hot wire in the switch box since that’s how the old receptacles received power to both top and bottom without the tab in place.
Since I no longer need the (red) switch wire in the switch box anymore, can/should I separate the two and cap them separately? That way I won’t have a live wire capped in the back of the receptacle boxes, as it currently is.