A slew sounds like a lot. Is it possible it’s happening to more requesters than just you? Any chance you can get a little admin help? If this was going on in my instance, I’d at least set up time to coach my users to change their filter to one that filters out all the “rubbish” (i.e. use a different report to this. Maybe even create a replacement dashboard as a custom section)
I think it’s also worth it to open a case with Support and ask what the reasoning is and why there’s such a lack of parity between submitted requests and assigned work (which only shows and notifies if the project is in an open status)