Lately, we've been getting the newspapers for my mom to read while she is with us. Today, she became frantic when I went to collect the old ones and put them in the recycling bin. My daughter, who is autistic; can not understand her grandmother's irrational behavior; therefore it irrupted into a shouting match about the newspapers when she went to collect them. Now she is taking the papers we bought her today to read and stuffing them in between the pages of a magazine as if she is hiding them from us. She is now becoming a hoarder on top of everything else.
So don't take them away, give her more. See where she puts them without commenting. Ask or have your daughter ask from time to time to "borrow" some of the papers for store ads or homework, just don't mention it again and don't give them back. If that doesn't work, collect them when she's out of the room or in the bathroom and can't see you do it. It's a way to minimize your frustration
I have to say however that you don't have to have dementia to do this. I worked for a very, very good doctor who horded newspapers. They came in daily but he never had time to read them, when we tried to clean them out he came unglued and they were stacked to the ceiling...still in the plastic wrappers!
Hoarding is hoarding they feel there is a very good reason to keep whatever the item(s) may be. Sometimes they may have grown up poor and everything was kept and reused or repurposed as we now say. Some people are creative or artistic and see the beauty in items they choose to keep. Sometimes they are just unable to rationalize that you read it already and you are getting a new one to take it's place so lets clean up the house and get rid of the old ones.
Why not let your Mom keep a few days of newspapers in her room, perhaps you could stack them on her dresser and then when she is not looking slip out the bottom one and toss it. If you can keep the quantity down I would let her and avoid an argument. If she is aware or wants to keep tons of them, I wouldn't let it get out of hand but ask her why she needs them and see if you can come up with a compromise, like no more than 5 days can be kept.
If she has never done this before, you can be assured it is the illness and she just cannot help herself. These mental illnesses cause our loved ones to do odd things.
We let the papers pile up by the door where she could see them. Any tidying up or throwing anything out was reserved for Mom's nap times.
My particular pet peeve was Mom's obession with saving those hideous plastic grocery sacks. If we tried to throw them away she would go ballistic. It drove me crazy but she wanted to give them to the church for their book sale. Mind you, the church has one book sale each year so you can imagine how many grocery sacks we had stuffed into cupboards, below the sink and anywhere else with extra space.
I agree with one of the posters who said that the older you get, the less control you have. It's an annoyance but certainly something we can work around. My Mom has been gone 8 months now. Go with the flow, as I look back, was definitely the right way to handle it (or maybe I should say, the way that worked for us). Of course, the priority was her safety but then creature comforts followed right after that.
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