feat: add generic localStorage preference helpers (#458)

[Kaycee276]

Description

Closes #458

This PR introduces a central localStorage utility for managing user preferences (e.g., preserving creator list sort orders across page reloads). The goal is to provide a unified, strictly-typed interface for reading and writing user preferences, eliminating the need for raw localStorage boilerplate scattered across components.

These shared helpers handle JSON serialization and deserialization seamlessly under the hood. They also ensure robustness by catching potential errors—such as malformed JSON payloads or restricted storage environments—and safely failing back to a provided default value instead of throwing runtime errors.

Changes Made

• Added getPreference<T> and setPreference<T> utility functions in src/utils/preferences.utils.ts
• Implemented a comprehensive unit test suite in src/utils/__tests__/preferences.utils.test.ts to ensure edge cases are fully covered.

Verification

The following acceptance criteria have been fully verified via unit tests:

• ✅ getPreference correctly returns the stored value for a key that exists.
• ✅ getPreference gracefully returns the default value if the key is missing.
• ✅ getPreference safely intercepts JSON.parse errors from malformed data and returns the default value without crashing.
• ✅ setPreference and getPreference can successfully round-trip complex JSON objects.

All tests validate locally via pnpm test src/utils/__tests__/preferences.utils.test.ts.

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