A commonly cited problem currently found in DF is the way owned items clutter up the fortress and are unable to be shifted. Here is a throwaway idea for how this might be able to be dealt with:
Owned items may be marked for dumping like any other item.
Any dwarf may dump an owned item, regardless of who owns it, but...
Instead of going to the 'garbage zone', an owned item will be shifted to, in order of preference:
The bedroom of the owner.
Any other building belonging to the owner.
The location of the owner.*
Also, owned items do not become forbidden after dumping.
Some other owned item suggestions:
It would make life much easier is dwarves would only claim ownership of items in shops and stockpiles. This would prevent them claiming random stuff off battlefields and other dangerous locations (at which point you have to spend the rest of that dwarfs life making sure they dont go after it) I dont mind 'Urist the Expendable, Peasant' going into ambushland to shift a random sock to a stockpile. When one of your decent craftdwarves decides thats *his* sock it gets more annoying.
Finally, and no doubt this has been raised before, when a dwarf is done with something, say a XXsockXX, they should relinquish ownership, and probably mark it for dumping for good measure.
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* This last one is to guarantee some dumping location. When you really *need* to shift an owned item, you don't normally care where it is going *to*. Also, I like the mental image of some dwarf bringing a sock or something over to another and just dumping it there "This is yours. Deal with it."