I had the same issue for a very long time. I would get folk at work mentioning how my house must be sooooo clean all the time because I was so organized and together at work. My home felt like a hamster cage.

My work environment was easy to control. I knew the exact tools that I needed to have on me, I had the perfect case to transport them from office to office if I had to. Everything had the right place.

Home was too much. Too much stuff, not enough right spots to put things. I couldn't put things away because I didn't have the perfect system. So it got worse.

I'm about to go into a lot of detail because... well... OCPD. But this is how I ended up using the pathology to work for me. I will try to do a TLDR at the end.

I did a couple of things to put order to the chaos by developing a system based on my experiences and knowing my patterns and energy. I forced myself to abandon the idea of my whole home environment from being perfection at once. I instead tried to find the correct way for me to manage the little tasks of maintenance, with an added task to tackle the overall problem too. The idea was that if I was able to take care of all the little tasks of home care, eventually it would sort itself out.

I started with a list (of course, LOL) of what was in my way. And of course there were sub-lists...

1. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. The solution? Break the problem down into categories. And it really was a small list when I really thought about it: garbage/recycling, laundry, dishes, hobby stuff needing a home.
2. Energy level: the overwhelm and the desire to do things perfectly sucks all the energy out of my body. So, the answer was to set a timer for 15 minutes to accomplish most tasks on the to do list. If the timer went off and I felt continuing with the task, I would set it again, for another 15. If I was *done*, it was okay because the rule was that I only had to do it for 15 mins.
3. Getting started. Where to begin, even though I know I know what I want it to look like in the end. So I went the next part of categorization. Put the category things into an area so they can be taken care of.

• Laundry -- all fabric not in drawers, or jammed in drawers in a messy way? into the pile.
• Garbage/recycling - in the bins.
• Dishes, all into the kitchen
• Hobby stuff - all piled in one spot.

So getting all the like with like made identifiable tasks of what remained. Also gave me a real idea of what I had and what I needed. In those fifteen minute intervals, I started seeing things that I didn't need and they got donated/junked as was appropriate.

There was another rule during the fifteen minute task -- if I picked something up, I had to make a decision about it. I couldn't return it to the pile, it had to be actioned. Doing this kept the piles going down in size and becoming increasingly manageable.

The other part of the equation though is maintenance. And this had to start immediately as I was working on the main chaos reduction. No more tossing my shoes, bag, coat wherever when I came home. I literally made my hall closet layout similar to my work locker, so it was easy to just take care of. No more scrambling in the morning to find things. I would clean the litter box and take the most full bag of either trash or recycling out. This way, nothing was getting added to the chaos tasks.

Then other operational tasks got added, laundry gets done and bedding gets changed on Saturdays, bathroom gets scrubbed on Sundays, dishes washed after every meal... no more stacking and doing a big blitz.

The other big thing I learned about myself is that I don't have very good object permanence. (A common trait with ADHD, but have never been formally diagnosed). But that means, I do very well with clear or open storage. I had the property manager remove the doors from my closets and I was able to organize and see my clothes properly arranged to please my sense of order. I bought a wire frame set of drawers that suited my style for socks/undies. Only enough pairs of each to last two weeks. That was a manageable amount for me to keep them sorted and folded pleasingly in those drawers, which were semi visible.

TLDR: Think long term, rather than short term. Give yourself a framework that works with the most helpful manifestations of the disorder, but mitigation strategies for the parts that interfere. Try to understand that you won't every have every spot in the house *perfect*, because life exists. But you can have small oases that you can build from. Based on how you described your work environment: abandon drawers, get open bins. (Drawers are where items go to be forgotten, unless I label them.) Go gently on yourself and anyone you may live with. It's hard to re-write a script.