What you are doing is great!! Caregivers like you come up with the best ideas. Relaxing the rules like you are (things get done but not perfectly), is the way to go. Great job Lovingwife!

Thank you Dr. Helen, for your reply to my comments, I have been giving him his laundry to fold and some of mine as well. He takes his time and does a pretty good job even though it is not the way I would do it, that does not matter. He is engaged in a task and I make sure his effects are appreciated too. Then I put mine away and have him put his own away and that is interesting, His drawers look more like a childs, no sense of order, but, again, that is not important either. He is such a wonderful guy and it is so good to see him happy trying to do something for me….
This Alzheimer's is a horrible way to finish up a life of hard work and being a productive good husband and friend to so many, thanks for the opportunity to vent.

Lovingwife, thank you for your detailed comment. This is exactly why we need to get behaviors on policymakers radars! They are one of the more stressful and difficult parts of managing a loved one with dementia. And medications in many cases do not help the symptoms you described other than sedating a person (which can lead to new problems). One thing that may help is giving him some type of tailored activity. And by tailored, I mean something that he would have liked in the past and would like now. Because of trouble initiating with dementia, you will have to set it up and get him going, but once done, you may buy yourself some time. So you might give him some things to "organize" as an activity that would keep him busy and not mess up your recycling! Good luck and take care.

They could have included incontinence and in some cases habitual or repetitive actions that the Alzheimer person would not do had he/she not had Alzheimer's….
An example of this is my husband was used to us driving south to San Jose Baja California Mexico every year for the past 8 years. So even now after we started flying for the last couple years, he still thinks we are driving and is constantly trying to pack the car with all kinds of crazy things, for instance today he managed to loose one of our phone receivers and when I needed to make a call, found the line to be engaged, therefore no dial tone. We had a couple over visiting for a few hours and we scoured the house, looking in every conceivable corner all 3 of us for a good hour, suddenly I said, Has anyone checked the car, sure enough it was on the back seat in a plastic bag with some paper garbage and an old plug in phone and his belt and in the back of the car was also a wind breaker, two how to books a cookbook pliers and tape……
He is always wanting to put stuff in the car so I try to remember to lock it now, it is in the garage so normally I would not lock it. He also wants to help out so he is always taking any type of garbage down to the garage and instead of putting it into the right receptical he puts everything in one so I have to put on rubber gloves and sort it out before the garbage men come by. Here we have the blue box with blue and yellow bags, all for certain things and a regular trash can and a can for all yard clippings and now we also add the kitchen peelings, egg shells, bones, plate scrapings, so you can imaging my delight when he puts it all in one can…gurrrr Anyway staying on topic, there are all those behaviours mentioned and more and the article is right, there is very little talk about all these behaviours and as mentioned above, most of us care givers do not have the training to manage these behaviour in a positive fashion, my support group is my classroom as well as the home front. IN Canada we have the Alzheimer's society totally not for profit, that hold work-shops for us and everyone connected to the society are volunteers all but one person who is a regular full time employee, this is in the towns or cities that have an office. Anyway, I enjoyed reading the article here on the silent topic of behavioural problems…thanks