When/if you move to the new rule engine, you can use metadata to store this information. In OH3, we should be able to modify it through a UI too!
You beat me to it, Rich 
! This is how all of my lighting and sound automations work, and some others too. One rule for everything, with lux, timers, TimeOfDay, etc. I call it the Mother of the Mother of All Lighting Rules. Just take your example a little further… all triggering Items (motion, contact, locks, etc.) separated into groups by area, and those groups as members of a single Area_Triggers group. Trigger on ‘Member of Area_Triggers’ and use Associated Items to call actions on the corresponding Area_Actions groups. Most of the logic turns to the group functions, rather than having to build complex logic in rules.
One of these days I’ll get around to posting that, but planning on putting it into a template and wanted the Jython addon to be available first. But after your post, I should probably just post it now as an advanced example of this DP! I think this rule could be a bit of a game changer for new users getting their automation setup quickly.