Narrow escape!! Actually you should indeed not be too casual about where you store your gear and give it a bit of thought. A normally heated room or area in your home is really ideal where it isn't subject to sudden changes in teperature leading to condensation when you get it out.
Be wary of dumping your bag of gear down on the carpet when you come in too. All sorts of critters live in your average carpet, and I once picked up a bug in my Nikon F4 viewfinder. It was extremely annoying and distracting watching his antics when I was trying to concenrate on wedding shots. I took the camera to my repair guy but all his efforts failed to get the little git out, he just dived down into the bowels of the camera somewhere, and re-appeared next time I used the camera.
He eventually either vacated or got mashed in the shutter - I like to think the latter.
It's not unheard of for bugs to breed in there and for the camera to become badly infested so something else to be aware of.