I haven't seen this topic, and this week it has popped up as an issue for me. There have been a couple of occasions that I have come home from work to see homemade envelopes from used typing paper that my husband "addressed" with a note inside that made no sense at all! The address was to himself, as was the return address, and it was incomplete both places! I saw the postwoman the next day (on a Saturday) and explained that my husband had AD what I had found and asked that if she found any mail in our box to go out, to please leave it in our mailbox. She said she had found one thing earlier the week before and had left it also. She said she would tell her substitute as well. This week, for two days, there has been no mail. My husband always brings in the mail and puts it on the desk. There is not a day that goes by that we don't get either advertisements or bills or statements. I haven't been able to locate where he put them (I even looked in the trash!). I'm wondering if I should get a post office box and go there to pick up my mail. Has this been an issue with anyone else?
You can also get a locked mailbox--I know they have the wall-hung sort, but there's probably also a rural style (for on a post.) It would have an unlocked opening near the top for the mail lady to drop stuff in, but because it's deep, you open a lower door--with a key--to remove the mail. You could say that some of the neighbors have had mail taken out of their boxes, so it's for security reasons.
my husband always gets the mail,sometimes i don't get it for a couple of days,but he would be very upset if i locked him out of the mailbox. getting the mail is one small thing he can still do and i feel, we have to give them any thing they can still do no matter how small.
My husband used to work with me at my company. We have a PO box as well as local street delivery. My husband was always the person who did the mail runs, picking it up and distributing it to our employees.
Long before I realized he had a serious problem, I started noticing mail that was clearly an offer for a credit card dumped in the recycling bin.
I tried and tried and tried to get him to understand that we needed to shred things like that. No luck. I resorted to going through the recycling bin every day, to retrieve "good" mail and things that needed shredding ... but this only worked if I got to the recycling bin before he carried it out to the trash.
I finally had to train him to bring the mail to me, and let me distribute it. That worked OK for a while, although every now and then he would forget, and do something weird. (I think that tended to happen when he saw an envelope with a return address that upset him for some reason.)
Once he'd been diagnosed, and stopped driving, we agreed to walk to the PO together, to get exercise. He's happy with that, and doesn't fuss that I keep the mail in my possession.
Since most of the important mail goes to the PO box, I still let him bring the mail delivered to the facility upstairs. I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea, but what the hey. We all decide to take some risks, to allow our spouses to be as active as possible.
We've had a locked box at home ever since mail was stolen ... including two boxes of new checks. (But that's another story. What a mess that turned into!)
Anyway, perhaps you could get your husband to accept a locked box at the house by explaining that someone has been stealing your mail.
The Post Office will only accept certain styles of locked boxes, so be sure to check with your local branch before you buy one.
I like the idea of a locked mail box! Thank you both for the suggestion - and I'll let him know it is to keep our mail from being stolen. I really don't think that it will upset him. I'll check with the post office on the one I just found on Amazon.com and see if it is acceptable. Thank you again!
My husband loves to get our mail too. But he sometimes goes out to get our mail and comes back with nothing. He forgets why he goes out our front door. I just look at him and smile and I say "mail". He smiles back at me, and then off he goes to the mail box. We try our best to keep a sense of humor.
My wife loves to get the mail, also. She would be crushed if I took one more thing that she can do away from her. We haven't had any serious problems with missing mail because I'm home and try to check it as soon as she comes bback in to the house. I have found mail that I wasn't aware of and we did have one instance where a credit card bill had a past due amount and a late fee. I don't think that I ever saw the original bill, but I can't swear that we never received it. Fortunately, the company forgave the late fee and I only had to pay a small amount of interest.
Good idea! I already have our children send their packages to my office, because he began opening EVERYTHING that came to the house! Two of my children order from Amazon and since they live outside the continental U.S., they send it to me to mail on to them. I've come home to see boxes opened and unpacked and had to re-pack and seal them before sending them on. I think I managed to find everything he took out! (The boxes were outside in the trash can.) :)
Now the packages come to my office!
As to the mail, yesterday was back to normal, so I'm going to play it by ear. I like the idea of the locked mailbox, and maybe we can have it so that we open the mailbox together each day when I come home. That way there won't be any feelings hurt, he can still help, and I'll feel better knowing my mail is all there. It's my latest thought on the subject - which I'm leaving open for the time being.
I appreciate the ideas. You have been a big help to me! Thank you so much! I'm so glad I found this site and all my new friends!
I'm so glad I found this site. I thought the mail thing was unique to him. He kept losing it. I'd get so frustrated. Finally, I'd watch for the mailman (he usually comes about the same time every day). DH goes out and gets it and then we look at it together. I'll separate it and anything with our name on it I give to him to shred. He seems to enjoy that. He can still do that.
Thankfully my DH doesn't throw away our mail because he often mixes it up so that things are put BACK in the envelopes that don't belong. Its not uncommon to find a bill inside a junk mail envelope. He leaves it beside his chair or on our dining table. However, there have been times when he has picked up our mail and it has stayed in his truck. He isn't driving now but I've found our mail outside on a lawn chair or other places in the yard where he's set it down to do something else. I have a P.O.Box in town for our bills and bank statements and just try to go through the other things that arrive from the mailbox if I don't open it first.
We moved last year and while in the rental property, I started to check into a post office box. Then we bought the house and this neighborhood has the locked boxes that are in spot, for the block, like they have at apartments.
My husband got a key, but we started to discourage his use, and then we removed it from his possession. A great help, and probably save us a log to grief when he got involved in internet scam.
early on i got one of the wooden toolboxes that has several locks and about 6 small doors on it esp for AD guys to entertain themselves with. its shaped like a mailbox-type and i put differnt things for him to find and fotos, candy, keys,play money,small binoculars,tape measures, anything that will entertain him. i cant tell you how many hours he opened and closed those doors and was soo happy to find the same things over and over...divvi
My husband also loves to get the mail. Sometimes, so much that he brings back the outgoing mail that he has placed in the mailbox 15 minutes earlier. Also, chased down a substitute mail carrier, demanding his mail when it hadn't been delivered yet. Of course the carrier wouldn't give it to him, which made my husband very angry. I have since told him that it is against the law for the carrier not to place the mail in the box. I don't know if it is, however, it has worked for now.
Same thing here. He would put mail all over the house and I would have to hunt for it. We recently started a new system here. I ask him to bring the mail into the house in a bag (designate some particular bag) and place it in a certain place. For some reason this seems to be working. Maybe the bag makes him feel for official?
The other issue is that if he gets to the answering machine before me, he will delete messages that I haven't heard yet. He can't ever tell me who called or what they said but he feels a need to keep the machine clear of all messages. . . . oh well . . . you win some . . . you lose some.
Gretchen, find out if you can get voice mail from your telephone company. Verizon automatically gives everyone voice mail. It is one of the features that are included, so you literally can't not have one, although you can not use it. My husband can't get the voice mail. He never learned how to get it in the first place when we first got here. It was one of those things that should have told me that there was a problem when I was clueless.
It is possible that your telephone company has voice mail available. And it will totally stop your problem. My phone has a light that tells me that there is voice mail in my voice mail box. When it is blinking he is more likely than me to notice it, but he can't get it or delete it.
Every day I come home from work and begin searching for the mail, paper, TV remote, etc. Sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't. Like so many I find bills stuffed in trash envelopes, etc. I put mail in the box to go out and that afternoon find it back in the house. So now I just bring the mail to work and have someone trot it over to the campus PO so that way I know it goes out. It's a nightmare! Like so many, I've begun doing automatic bill pay because of the inability to locate the bills to pay them. Take care!
Always learn something new! Thanks for the voice mail thing, Starling. I hadn't thought of that one!!
But re mail: If you haven't learned to do this, learn now: learn to use on-line banking, bill-paying and the rest. It is SAFE! if you are careful with hitting the "submit" buttons. Get your regular bills electronically. It saves paper, it doesn't get lost wherever DH decided to put it, etc. Have as many as you can that have identical charges each month deducted automatically, and get the rest of the bills electronically and pay them yourself through your bank.
If you can order through Amazon, you can do this. We had quite a few lost bills before I really got down to doing this, in the past year. You can schedule the payment date through your bank. I do NOT use automatic DEDUCTION for stuff like bills from Macy's or the cable company, where it changes each month; I want to check it out before I pay. I DO use a credit card for most everything else.
BE VERY CAREFUL that your spouse doesn't have access to a checkbook OR a credit card. MANY are known to be extremely generous to the charities that solicit through the mail, or the catalogues, even if they screw up writing the check. (read that article on the dementia experience. Math skills are among the first to go.) Also with phone conversations - even if you're on do-not-call, the charities call, and if your spouse gives them a card number, they're in business.
And in regard to using online stuff: you need to have a system for remembering passwords and usernames. Try to have different ones for ordinary groups like this (not that we're ordinary!) and for financial transactions, one that you know but no one else does. I find having a password-remembering program very useful: 1password for the mac is a good one. What's the PC one? I forget!
The one for the PC is Roboform. It is free up to a certain number of passwords which makes it easy to learn. I have paid for it, and they are good people to do business with. I've moved the pogram to several new computers after I paid for it. Lost the code to make it the paid kind and they gave it back to me from their records. Etc.
Starling you are right Roboform is a great piece of software. I too pay all my bills online and receive as many bills online as I can. Ironically the bills I can't get online come from my internet providers, both here in Chicago and in Sarasota, go figure. :)
Agreed. Roboform! People, be careful if you do get an on-line form filler - Gator, for instance, for the PC, is NOT good. But Roboform and 1password are invaluable.
I have decided to stop statements/and or anything important from coming in by regular mail, I have changed everything to be sent electronically to me by email. This has helped a great deal. Now when the mail comes it is mainly junk mail and magazines. I am very relieved that he can still go out and get the mail. If there is something that I am expecting I will have my daughter put all mail in the foyer rdrawer until I return home. I also requesting hold cards from the PO they stated that if I wanted them to hold mail at any particular time just fill out the card and leave in mailbox and I could come into the PO and pick it up at anytime. I hope this helps!
Divvi, where did you get the toolbox you mentioned in a (long ago) post above? Does it have a name? Sounds like a great gift to put on his Christmas list.
Jeanette, alzstore.com its called the Handymans Large toolbox @$76dol
you can access the alzstore website thru joans homepage and she gets credit for any purchases.
i bought this for my DH with the doors/latches/ etc and put fav candies/small gadgets/and things in the compartments for him to 'find'. he still likes it today after 5yrs! opens/closes those doors all day ! divvi
i was going to say this toolbox seems more appropriate for mid-4-6 stage AD. i think your DH is still too 'with it' to enjoy this at this point:) which is still a good thing! divvi