Hey, what I think you've got going on (if this is in Finder) is the fact that the default settings for Finder are basically nothing. Things just get dropped where you place them. I'm a sucker for grid spacing and "arranging by..." options, so this drives me crazy. In a way, though, Finder is just letting you rearrange things from the ground up. Play around with the "View Options", and you should be able to fix this.