I already posted this above, but here is a repost, because I know exactly how you feel:

        cat ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
        XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/.Desktop"
        XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/tmp"
        XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/tmp"
        XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/tmp"
        XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/tmp"
        XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/tmp"
        XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/tmp"
        XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/tmp"

Note that XDG_DESKTOP_DIR and XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR have to point to different directories. In hindsight, this is obvious, but this is also a really stupid "security" bug-o-feature that costed countless hours to countless people.

I shove them all into ~/docs and then edit my ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs file to match.