Like others have said, try to have a place for everything, but I have a couple of caveats. I have a spouse and two young children, so having a specific spot where everything always goes is not really feasible. I try to restrict things to specific areas, like specific drawers/boxes/containers for it's if a certain kind. This keeps clutter out of sight, and having a policy that every item lives within some kind of container allows me to control how much space I want to allocate to a category of items. For example, my kids love figurines and action figures; they have a box for those type of toys, and once the box gets full, they have to let go of some if they want to get something new.

We also have areas in our house where things are allowed to be "parked," but the parking lot has to be cleared everyday, so that every day begins without clutter/chair. These are mostly our flat surfaces, like the eating table, kitchen counters, coffee table, etc. Part of our nightly routine is to run around for 10 minutes cleaning off these spaces.