Hi Jess,
Not sure what you would call it, but it is a place I created so people could feel comfortable talking with others about clutter and hoarding. It seems to have caught on quite nicely :)

Thank you Cory. I understand this is your community?

Jess,
You are in good company. Perfectionism is a major cause of clutter and hoarding behaviors. Glad to read you will be joining us regularly. It is great to surround yourself with people that understand and that can support you when needed. It is never to late to learn no methods that will work!

Oh, I wanted to add, my home is currently manageable. It's just an endless struggle for me to keep it that way. I think my problems with an actual hoard would be much worse if I lived alone. But I've had these problems growing up when I lived with my parents (I was forced to confine it to my room but it wasn't acceptable to let it go in there either so I would get in trouble a lot for it), with roommates in college, and now with my husband. I always think things will be different in a new location at a new stage of life but I've always been wrong about that.

Thank you, I'm going to hang around. I've been doing a lot of reading here and found a good book on perfectionism. I'm going to check out some others that I've seen posted about here.

And I'm going to make myself go to the library and read them there or get them on Kindle. The last thing I need is another book sitting around!

It's so nice to meet people who understand. I don't know how I've been oblivious for so long thinking that nothing was different about me. Now that I'm starting to understand myself I feel isolated. This is definitely what I needed.

For me, it's not about collecting. There are things I keep because they are sentimental to me that probably shouldn't be, but that's not the bulk of my mess.

The bigger issue is that as soon as things slip from being completely organized I spiral into just jamming everything in the closet or hidden elsewhere to get it out of view. Then I get upset and anxious and overwhelmed. It gets worse. I end up binging on cleaning. This can only happen when I can clean from beginning to end and everything is perfect again, which can take an entire day with hardly any breaks to eat or use the bathroom.

It's exhausting. I've been this way since I was a child so I know it won't magically change one day.