Just so you guys know I cleared out a site in game and stored a bunch of my stuff in a chest. Came back and it was gone. I cleared out a house and store stuff there and it's fine. I had this issue in Fallout as well. Put a bunch of stuff in a barrel and came back the barrel was gone lol

Be careful with your stuff till ya get a house.

The manual warns you not to attempt to save items in containers you do not own.

When you buy a house the containers you have in there will be your very own and your stuff won't dissapear.

Azrael
The Nord With The Sword

It's not a glitch. Just the way game always is.

This is not a bug. This is by design. Containers that you aren't intended to use as storage will respawn over time. The alternative is like Morrowind, where containers never respawn, NPCs cannot access them and the contents of each container you have ever interacted with must become a permanent part of your save-game which leads to an inevitable eventual bloated save file which takes longer to load over time and eventually becomes unusable due to too much data.

Not a bug. Just poor planning and playing.
Buy a house, put you stuff in there, no problems.

Put it in a locker, suitcase, box etc in a public place that any Tom, dike, Harry or Sue can access----them's the break--you stuff is gone--kinda like real life.

Yup, It's known as the respawn rate and it happens every three days.
It's a hard lesson, which I'm sure we all experienced at some point, but it just teaches you to keep your goodies safe .

-Star

It was the thieves guild

You can also reliably use Treasure chests to store stuff in (you know, the ones that you find using the Treasure Maps). There's one near Riverwood that I was using for many hours without trouble.

Since most containers can respawn loot, they aren't considered persistent. Only house containers and a few others are tagged persistent. Not a bug, part of the design.