I don't understand how chests work.

Like, I put all my books in one and they are all sit in there nicely sorted alphabetically.
But put a pile of other sorts of stuff in a chest and they are all muddled together randomly.

This is why I sort things by location within my home. Ingredients go near the Alchemy table, Soul Gems by the enchanting table, unique items in a chest, crafting stuff in a barrel near the door, and so on. I typically also reserve the container closest to the front door (or one of them, if there are several) for items I know I will need later for miscellaneous quests, so that I don't accidentally sell them.

I do, however, still wish there was a way to sort things within a given container; the Uniques, for example, pretty much run the gamut of items, so it can be a real pain sifting through them to find all the Dragon Priest masks when I want to get the last one since they're not grouped together but rather all over the place on the item list.

I know SkyUI solves this, but I don't like its presentation either so don't use it.

Actually, you don't even need SkyUI, SKSE does it on it's own. There was a plugin called "Container Categorization" that's now built into the main program.

Do you think it would be better to have the players weapons and armour inventories seperated from the loot we pickup? I've accidentally sold items I'd planned on keeping on several occasions, annoying to say the least.

how bethesda thought this was ever a good idea is beyond me haha.."oh hey let's make a chest that has infinite capacity but absolutely no sorting whatsoever!" herp?

I was expecting it to be about how Lydia looks in plate armor.

ha true i've done this many times, mainly when i'm selling multiples of the same item and the cursor "jumps" to the next item in the list as i'm hitting sell....at least you can buy your item back but you have to pay full price for your mistake

From UESP :

All armors and weapons, sorted by their damage or armor.
All food, potions, ingredients, books, notes, and misc items, sorted by name.
All heavy boots, sorted by armor value.
All rings, necklaces, amulets, hats, hoods, cowls, caps, circlets, and ebony boots, sorted by value.
All unhooded clothing, sorted by value.
All hooded clothing, sorted by value.
Some gauntlets, boots, and bracers, sorted by armor.
Imperial bracers, steel cuffed boots, and all boots of light armor, sorted by armor.
Iron gauntlets and boots, scaled gauntlets and boots, sorted by armor.
All remaining light gauntlets and bracers, sorted by armor.
All non-armor shoes, boots and footwraps, sorted by value.

That's a pretty bizarre way of ordering things. 'Some' gauntlets?

...Well "chest inventory lists" must be the least obvious way of saying briasts i've heard so far

Armor and weapons are definitely the worst at sorting -- no apparent rhyme or reason. I use different chests for sorting diff types of items, but the ones with either A&W or clothing are a jumbled, sorting nightmare. At this point (if not on PC), I guess we'll just have to deal with the inevitable cringe before opening a container with gear in it ... sigh.

Pretty sure the thread title was originally just Chests are Ridiculous