She thinks she has no clothes

Stormyskies67

Mom is in mid stage of dementia.

She is constantly telling me she has no clothes.

I assure her she does and they are in her dressers.

She tells me there is no dressers in her room.

II tell her where they are and she goes in and is delighted when she finds them. She never gets her own clothes I get them for her but she's always worried about it. We go through it about every other day. The last couple of days she can't remember where her bedroom is. I worry because she gets so confused

GothicGremlin

Early on, certainly less than a year after my sister was diagnosed, I read this book called "Somebody I Used to Know" by Wendy Mitchell.  Both she and my sister have early onset Alzheimer's.  In her book, Wendy Mitchell describes how she also thought she had no clothes.  Of course all of her stuff was in the closet or the dresser. But I guess when you get to the mid-stages, you can forget that closets and dressers are containers for your clothes. Wendy Mitchell's workaround was to tape photos on each drawer and closet that showed what was inside. Clever.  I highly recommend this book. It's not depressing, but kind of inspiring. I ended up reading it to Peggy (my sister) because she lost the ability to read early on. There were times when I was reading where Peggy would stop me and say "that's exactly how it feels!" 

Before Peggy moved to memory care, me and a caregiver I use labeled Peggy's dresser drawers. It helped. It wasn't 100% but I think that's because Peggy's vision is fairly compromised. 

I understand completely about your worry.  One day Peggy called me at work -- she couldn't find the bathroom. I directed her to it and she exclaimed "there's all my stuff!"  I was happy that she found it, but it was disconcerting that she couldn't find the bathroom.

Stuck in the middle

It's usually eyeglasses that are lost in our house, but I know what you mean.  I typically use the "Let's go look" approach and we walk through the house together until we find the missing item.  Since I know where they usually are when they are lost, this doesn't take long.

This confusion is very frustrating to our LOs and for us.  I am sorry you and your mother have to deal with this.

Emily 123

My mom doesn't recognize any clothes that we've bought her over the last few years-the defaults are her older things that she's had for a while.  Now we just buy matching replacements, nothing new.  Can be tricky because sometimes hades for things like tops change each season, and of course tracking down the sneakers from a while back gets harder.

Iris L.

After a time use photos instead of labels.

Iris

Stuck in the middle

I think I would put the dresser in storage and buy a set of open shelving at Lowes.  You can always move it to the garage or potting shed after this phase passes.

OK, I know this will foul up the room decor.  I'm a man, I don't care.

jfkoc

You can also get a very inexpensive hang rack. In both instances I would limit the amount of visible clothing.

JMack88

My mom isn't as far along as yours, but she's doing something similar.  She only wears two or three favorite outfits over and over again and when those need to be washed, or are in the hamper then she "has nothing to wear" even though her closet and dresser are full of other options.  I actually started a thread about the dirty clothes issue because she was coming to me every day wanting me to wash the same things over and over again.  My sister and I now put her clothes away for her after washing them so she doesn't do this as much, I wonder if she was just putting them in the laundry basket because she didn't know what to do with the clean stuff?  In any case, I have found that as long as I get her things that are very warm and very soft (not scratchy to the skin) she will wear them more often and they will become part of her rotation.

sophirolr

My mom specifically pretended she didn't have things for me to buy her new ones.  She was very angry recently because I didn't buy her new clothes for about a month. On the eve of her birthday and I bought her a lot of new clothes. Today I received a message that the parcel may be delayed, but noracora customer service ( https://noracora.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html ) helped to solve my problem. I am very happy for this because my mother's birthday is already 4 days away!

May flowers

My FIL could never find his clothes, either in the closet or drawers, even with pictures on the drawers. I ended up installing a rack of hooks on his wall and put a few shirts and pants on hangers for him to see, and set out socks and undies on his dresser. 

I put a big sign on his door with his name, and that worked for a while. The other bedrooms stayed locked so he could only enter his room and bathroom.

FloydSnax

This has shown me how much my mom's illness has progressed. I miss those days of misplacing things. Today (for the first time) she didn't know how to navigate dressing. I run her shower and put all she needs to get dressed right on the hamper. She called me when she was finished, clueless to what to do next. But then she dressed herself...I can't get a handle on it. Shes beginning to not understand anything. But then she does. It's a sick joke.