I’m glad you are enjoying the game!
There’s an element of gating going on. Like the game doesn’t want you to go upstairs before you’ve been to the office, you can’t go to the courtyard before going upstairs, and so on. The items you are looking for tend to be in another area (with one obvious exception), so if you can’t find something, check another area, and if you can’t find it there look to see if you’ve unlocked the next area.