This is just a warning, I had a recent save, but YOU might not!

I bought the Hjerim in Windhelm and didn't have any money to upgrade it at the time, fine no problem I'll just go in the house and store my stuff in MY OWN treasure chest that comes with the house.

So, over the course of time I store like at least 10,000 bucks worth of collected items just waiting to be sold. And I've got about 5,000 in my pocket. Good time to upgrade my house I'm thinking. I go see the steward and pay for a house cleanup, weapon room, bedroom and living room then go to my house to cash in some of my collected treasure.

But... apparently my treasure chest isn't mine and is considered part of the house cleanup! WTF!!! The manual actually says that stored items in your purchased property will not disappear! Unless of course you consider a treasure chest in your purchased Hjerim home to be your property.

Buyer Beware!

I learned this the hard way, too. Tapped all my money to buy the house, so I stored my stuff in the living room chest until I could afford decorations. Of course the first decoration was the clean-up, which proptly removed the chest and my stash.

At first I was just a little upset, because I lost my blade sword; but I figured that I could find another. Then I remembered that I also stored a dragon priest mask in there, too. Now if I collect the rest of the 8 available masks, I won't be able to place them all at the alter to retrieve the nineth one! I guess the rest of the masks will just be room decorations.

Bummer!

The manual is actually correct, as containers in player houses do not respawn. That particular container in Hjerim, though, has to go to make room for some of the decor, with which it shares that space. You see, the decorations within a given player house are actually already there when you buy it, but they start out 'disabled' and the script 'enables' them when you buy that part of the decor. The chest in Hjerim, on the other hand, starts out enabled, and then gets disabled by that same script when you purchase that room's decor. Since you can no longer access the chest, anything that was in it is effectively gone for good.