Okay so i just got Skyrim last thursday, and I recently bought a house in Whiterun and I went there and cleaned out the house, sames as what I do in Morrowind when I take a house, and redecorated it to my liking. I then told my housecard (Latin for six slave ) to wait there. I left and rode halfway across the land and slayed a couple of dragons and came back to my house to store my dragon bones and scales. When I got back, though, I found the house in shambles and all my carefully placed relics sprawled on the floor. Has anyone had this problem before? Is it just a problem with the game, or is it my life servant raging?

Thanks in advance for all of the posts!

Lol. Dont give up. The trick is to drop the stuff out of your inventory, go outside the house,go back in and place it. Should be fine then.

Yeah this is a common problem. Items seem to reset to where you drop them. I have found they only do this once though, so if you drop something, place it somewhere it will reset to where you dropped it. Then if you place it somewhere again it will stay there assuming you just grab it and place it without putting it back in your inventory.

Its really annoying but it seems to work for me. I would have hoped they would have fixed this by now as alot of people like to display thier spoils around their homes.

From personal experience I can say the drop/leave/return/decorate process works quite well. I would advise however that if you have any NPCs in the house with you (housecarl, follower, spouse), and particularly if you have more than one NPC in the house, that you go in a room with doors you can close and drop any items there.

If you drop something in front of an NPC there is a chance that he/she will remark on it and either ask if they can have it, or just give it back to you. Had a follower do this with a dragon claw I was planning to put out on display. Kinda hard to drop something and leave if some well-meaning NPC keeps stuffing it back in your inventory.

If there is more than one NPC present there is a chance they will both call dibs on the dropped item and then fight each other over it. Supposedly this happens if the item is valuable, but I've had a follower and housecarl almost kill each other over a wooden plate.

The funniest one was just last night, Argis and Calder came to blows over a copy of Uncommon Taste that I was trying to put on a shelf in the kitchen. You know I keep coming home and finding one or the other of them slaving over the cooking pot - but I had no idea they were that serious about the culinary arts.

I noticed my house carl in Markarth got really pissed that I spent more time with the book case then I did with him. Infact I never use him haha. I went in to drop off some more books cause that house has the largest selection of book cases... every book was lying on the floor. Looked like he walked by and threw them all down. When I re-activated the book case they all magicly re-aligned off the floor and back on the shelves.

You should take the hint and let him tag along sometimes, because Argis is awesome.

Lol. I get rid of both male housecarls. Mutton chops and argis now reside at sky haven temple as members of the blades. Lydia is eating bread alone in an empty breezehome, and my wife jordis the care-bear live in hjerim.

Yeah i know the decorating can be frustrating nowadays but a lot of fun so don't give up!

I really disliked housecarls until Argis, because my first experience of that was Lydia and I *hated* her. I know a lot of it is because I tended to meet her at low levels, and she ended up being either a liability very quickly or outright died because she wouldn't stay out of the way. But a lot of it was her voice acting and her behavior when she was in Breezehome. (Like, she has her own room, how about she stay the hell out of mine? Especially when I have a husband and, you know, we'd like to turn in for the night. *ahem*)

Mods have fixed a lot of those issues but I just never quite got over my dislike of her. Second playthrough she went straight to the Blades, as did the one in Riften and Calder because I had other followers and/or spouses and didn't want them crowding up my homes and had no interest in them as followers because I'd think of Lydia and just cringe. I would've sent the one in Solitude as well if the game had allowed it, but that's a bigger house and I was hardly ever there so it wasn't so bad. Argis was the last housecarl I got and for some reason I took him along on some stuff in and around the Reach and I just really liked him.

Iona in riften and lydia are absolute mood killers for sure with thier like to watch creepy habits of sitting two. Feet away you you and your spose like they are watching tv. With snacks and everything lol. Ive used argis a few times and properly equiped,hes a good tank, but being a guy,cant take the "i am your sword and your shield" stuff. Sounds like. Hes saying something else lol. Agreed about lydias passive aggressive tude. She can noisily munch all the bread in breesehome she wants. I never go there!

I'm kinda planning on keeping all my housecarls this time around, because my primary home is Hjerim and it's big enough that I can have several NPCs plus a dog in there and it doesn't seem overly crowded. Breezehome and Honeyside, even with the mods I use, are still just too small and closed in for that many warm bodies. Proudspire may have more floor space but it feels SO cramped in there. I'll be using a different mod for that this time around and I haven't been inside yet to see just what it does.

I've had the same problem... it's really disconcerting, generally I just save myself the hassel and take things as is.

decorating in ob > decorating in skyrim

the bookshelves implementation really stinks too, they never actually look full and usually the books just fall over.

also why not be able to place other items on the shelves? This stuff really seems half-baked and pushed out before it was even close to finished.

also the physics seem 'off' for most objects relative to moving stuff in OB.

cant say for myself because this is my first tes game but will say it was better in fallout 3. Had the biggest bar in the wastes AND spent hours duplicating the chessboard! Lol

if i were able to use mods, i think the first one i would choose would be a housing mod. Ive seen some very good mods for this. Sigh. The lamments of the console player.

I gave up on decorating. Trying to rotate statues to all face the same way pushed me over the edge. And my decanter NEVER STAYS on a shelf no matter how many times I drop/leave/re-enter/and place it. Same goes with my bust of Gray fox.

I give serious props to anyone who has the patience to decorate a home in Skyrim.

The object you mentioned are glitched. They dont play along. Having prowlers profit, i love the bed of jewels and table of jewels though. Most stuff will stay where you put it. I have issues with the model ship also.

This 100%

Enter, place object where you want, save, carry on as normal.

99% of poltergeist activity has ceased since I started habitually saving after placing objects.

Every now and then one of them will be on the floor when I come back but I place them again and it's fine from that point on.

This was a big issue for me when I first started playing but the above strategy has pretty much solved it.
If you're into decorating your house in TES then I'm sure it's a BIG part of the game for you, all I'm saying is don't give up!

This was a hot issue when the game was released but the subsequent strategies players figured out to overcome it has made it into a minor inconvenience at worst.

So try the save trick, try the dump, leave, come back trick.

I think most people have seen results with these tactics... players solving problems for Bethesda again, THERE BETTER BE FREE HORSE ARMOUR FOR ALL PLATFORMS!

No it isn't

House is not even a Latin word
Carl (not "card") is a name, usually latinized as "Carolus"

Housecarl together means absolutely nothing in Latin


A housecarl was a bodyguard in ancient Scandinavia. The housecarls is one of many things about the Nords and Skyrim that is inspired by Norse culture.


OT: I believe it has happened me once or twice, but it's usually just a bowl or a plate or something like that.

Placing things and then saving immediately was always hit and miss for me. Seemed like I usually had to do it at least twice because I'd come back and stuff would be on the floor again. I'd place it all again and save again and then it would stay put, mostly.

But that's kinda when I realized that it probably wasn't all the saving that was fixing the problem, it was the fact that I dropped something once, placed it, left, and placed it again when I came back because saving the first time hadn't worked. I've been doing it that way now and it's working better than the constant saving did, but not 100% - altho the exceptions are always the same couple of items that I keep trying to place in the same spots, so I think it's those items/locations that are buggy and not the procedure. But I may try a combo of both - saving after the drop/leave/return/place - and see what happens.


I'm just gonna assume you're trying to carry on the joke but forgot to add the necessary "lols" or smileys. Cuz anything else would just be way too sad for a Tuesday.

I didn't realize it was a joke, sorry. I tend to rage when I defend my country's (Sweden's) history, and apparently while defending Latin to...

Be careful about dropping items and leaving the house. Things have a nasty habit of clipping through the floor. Always save first in case you lose something.

Lol I sort of had that happen with a book I dropped in Breezehome's master bedroom last night. I dropped several things, turned around, couldn't find the book. Checked inventory, it's not there either. Thought maybe it was a bugged item that went *poof* if you dropped it. Then I reloaded the save from when I entered the house, dropped *only* the book, and watched carefully. It disappeared when it hit the bedroom floor... so I checked downstairs. Sure enough it landed on the floor in the dining room.

At least it was easy to locate, I have had to use tcl to get to stuff that dropped or rolled or was poltergeisted into unfortunate places.

I didn't realize that we were being serious here, friend. I know it is not latin for that. and my TV is like 12 inches wide. It looks like it says housecard, but thank you ever so kindly for correcting the grammatical error which is sauce.