And sometimes, Aditi, habits merge and adapt. Or transform. Or wander off in odd directions oblivious to intent.

My wife used to "leave things around." So did I. Only MY things were "I will do something with this, but not right now." Deb's things were, "I need this to remind me of something else entirely that I need to do." So when she tidied up MY things, they vanished from human knowledge. (This is also the period where we were still learning each other's storage methodologies.) So if I tidied up HER things, I destroyed her system because her reminders disappeared.

Now when we leave something out, we have "zones." Some zones are reminders to self (DO NOT TOUCH SOMETHING IN THE OTHER PERSON'S ZONE!). Some zones are "hey, you might want to look at this?" (usually mail, sometimes something brought home from somewhere — look at it, ask questions if needed, move it slightly to indicate it's been looked at, the original placer then has responsibility to deal with it). Some zones are "this is going somewhere" (stuff at the bottom of the stairs is going up, stuff at the top of the stairs is going down) that anyone can transport when going in the right direction.

And sometimes something got moved by the cleaning service that comes in every other Friday. We're still occasionally tripped up by that one.