"Relocated Items" folder - Whaaaat?

Thank you for your reply.

Anything not stored inside your home folder gets moved to /Users/Shared/Relocated Items. There should have been an alias to that folder on your Desktop.

Nope, no alias on the Desktop. None.

I'd take issue with their folder naming convention, too: "Previously Relocated Items". There's nothing that was "Previously" relocated. Folder should be named "Everything You Care About That We Decided To Put Someplace You Don't Want". Or "Its Our Computer Not Yours And We Just Tossed All Your Stuff In A Hole So Get Used To It".

You can't store anything on the root level of the startup drive at all. Keep your files in your home folder.

Ugh.

As mentioned, you can move the files from Relocated Items into your home folder.

Ugh.

No, you can put them in the place you were always supposed to put them, in your home folder. You should move anything you want from that folder into your home folder.

I'm gobsmacked and disgusted. Mostly disgusted.

I've been using Macs every day both professionally and personally since my first Mac SE. I have never, ever had any desire, or seen a single good reason, to put ANYTHING in a "Home" folder. Never. Not once. (Presumably you actually mean a "User" folder, because the only "Home" folder on any Mac I've ever owned is the one where I put documents pertaining to my house).

I've spent many years organizing and tweaking how I store, well, everything, and my organizing structure works well for me. Having direct access to all my stuff, organized in a way that works best for me, seems like a really fundamental (and reasonable) expectation. Now that's all out the window? To get to anything I have to drill down 2 or 3 additional levels in the file hierarchy, before I can get to my existing (and perfectly functional) organizing structure? That sounds horrible. Every time I do anything, 2 or 3 more clicks to navigate to the starting point where before I installed this OS, all I had to do was open the hard drive? Ugh. This is going to require (literally) millions of unnecessary clicks (over the years) to navigate the file structure. All for no good reason, save Apple's arrogance.

That's just awful, and makes the prospect of just using my Windows machine a lot more attractive. I don't know whether to laugh or cry or both. I see a lot of posts here by people looking for ways to go back to Mojave...maybe I should just do that.

Before Catalina - to navigate to anything:

1. Double-click on Macintosh HD on the desktop. Everything I want to access is right there in an open Finder window.
2. There is no Step 2.

After installing Catalina - to navigate to anything:

1. Double-click on Macintosh HD on the desktop.
2. Double-click on Users folder.
3. Double-click on one of the three User folders there. (Why are there three "Users" or "Home" folders there that I have to pick from? Beats me. I'm the only person who has ever or will ever have access to this computer, but why there are separate "User" folders for <MyName>, <Guest> and <Shared> seems like some stunningly bad choice by one of Apple's brilliant system architects years ago who decided every Mac must have them). But it seems "Shared" is the one that is in play here, so I double-click that one, and continue drilling down.
4. Double-click on Previously Relocated Items folder.
5. Double-click on Security folder.

And there, 5 levels closer to the center of the earth than where I started, I find the well-organized contents of my hard drive, as they were at the root level previously.

So by default, now it's 5-clicks down to get where I used to reach with a single click.

I've found that I can eliminate one of the nested levels by creating a new folder (I'm calling it "Everything") inside "Shared" and moving the whole mess up there. Hooray, now I can accomplish in just four clicks what used to take one. That's still 3 more clicks every time I want to access something. OK, I can make an alias of "Everything" and stick it on my Desktop next to the "Macintosh HD" icon (which used to actually have some useful functionality...honestly, now that it's been neutered, what's the practical use for having the original "Macintosh HD" icon on your desktop, other than for nostalgia? It's no longer useful enough to justify taking up the prime screen real-estate...maybe that's Apple's intention).

The answer to your question directly: the imposed file structure mandates multiple extra clicks every time one wants to navigate to their files fro the desktop. It's a really, really horrible user experience. Imagine all the needless RSI damage that stems from this design choice: 5 extra double-clicks (or even just 4) when multiplied by every user, every time they want to access anything...it's staggering. Apple should be working to reduce the number of clicks required to access your data, not increase it...