So, I bought Breezehome. This is with my tomb-scholar Argonian. She is a collector of ancient Nord antiquities, minerals and curiosities. So, she had a full set of enbalming equipment, old pots and dishware, weapons and some armor, dragon claws, gemstones, various ores - blah, blah blah. I thought it would be nice to put my discoveries on display. I cleared off the pretty blue dishware and foodstuffs and set out some of my collection so I could admire it like a wicked nerd.

Then when I came back from other adventures my stuff was strewn all over everywhere.

So, this is clearly not a big deal, but why did I spend 5,000 fake gold pieces on a cute fake home I could decorate with my fake stuff only to have it look ransacked every time the world resets? I realize this is a first world and monumentally meaningless problem. But still. I want to look at my swag, dammit.

It's kind of annoying. There's really not a very good interface for placing things in your home. Here's a tip that might help, though:

Try just dropping the stuff you want to place on the floor, then leave, then come back and place it where you want it. It SHOULD stay where you put it that way.

theres a simple trick to it. Just drop what you want displayed, then leave the house and reenter and position wichever it is you want positioned. Just make sure you dont accidently grab something again or you would have to drop that item again and leave/reenter again.
Also some items that are to big for displaycases, mostly you can tell if they clip with the lid, will not stay on there position even if you leave/reenter the house.
hope that helps.
Decorated quite a few houses now and it always worked fine using that method.

Ooh, thanks for that. I'll give that a try.

Hasn`t the Patch fixed this?

Not that ive experienced no, but havent started new game yet on patch.

As far as I'm aware the patch hasn't fixed this. I've done this (dropped, leave, come back, re-place items) and it didn't work for me. Although, my golden claw and ONE of my Dibella statues stay in place on my table. But my other Dibella statue always ends up knocked over. I've only tried re-placing the items once since the patch 1.4, so maybe I just didn't do it right. I hope it works the next time, because I have a BUNCH of stuff I want to display.

And as a funny side note: Everything that came with Breezehome that wasn't glued down, I picked up and put it all in the smallest bag in the house. I think that's hilarious. It's like Doctor Who's Tardis. (but I'm glad that there's no limit to how much inventory can be kept in something. )

The patch actually trashed my Breezehome. I had a nice array of weapons and helmets and pretty goodies laid out around the place, entered it after the patch, and found that it looked like the leftovers from a battlefield, and my ghostblade had disappeared.

Next time they decide to provide for 'home decorating', I hope they give it to the intern developer who is a clean freak, not the 'Live in a share house like a grub' bachelor one.

I decorate my homes quite a bit and can attest to dropping items, leaving, coming back and placing them seems to work. I do one pass in a house dropping things where I'll need them, leave, then make a 2nd pass placing everything.

I haven't downloaded the newest patch (waiting to see about any new bugs before taking the plunge). Good to know that I'll have to start from decorating scratch when I do patch the game. There are worse things in life, but it's better to be prepared for it.

I've learned to check my house carl if something has went missing after "an Earthquake" knocks it all to the floor. Argis had a sword, non-enchanted Ebony, that I had put on a table. I had planned on enchanting it and giving it to him anyway. Lydia had a helmet that I had put on a shelf, came home and the rest were on the floor, didn't actually miss it. When I took her out for a quest and she put it on, I had to laugh.

Actually I had more of a problem with Argis giving me stuff back, that I had placed on tables or the hearth.

The dropping of items and re-entering seems to be a quick fix to this horrible problem indeed.
I found that sometimes for whatever reason it still doesn't work, instead: exit, save + load, then re-enter seems to be a bit more stable.

And don't even get me started on the frustrating mess of actually moving items into place by hand...compared to say Fallout 3 and Oblivion where this was handled beautifully.

EDIT: A couple of items (helmets for me for some reason) sometimes don't budge from their original dropped position no matter how many times you enter/exit save/load etc.
Was messing around with "moveto player" and disable/enable during and after repositioning them and for some reason they unf&%ked themselves.