Just a dumb question here. In Skyrim, items placed in containers wind up in a haphazard order, making it difficult to find items and keep track of inventory. In oblivion the items were listed in alphabetical order (much nicer IMHO). Is there a mod out there that fixes this in Skyrim and makes containers keep things in alphabetical order?

SkyUI allows for a variety of sorting options in the inventory (alphabetical, sort by weight, sort by value, and other options as well).

Look at SkyUI first. If nothing else, it makes all the fonts smaller so you can see more items in the inventory window and sort them the way you want. If your using Wrye Bash, there (might be) is a tweak to have items at least sort by type so all armors group together etc. Note, I was just rebuilding my Bashed Patch last night and failed to notice if this was an option in this game with the patch, I was doing some thing else at the time.