My Peter, now more than ten years along dementia’s downward slope, is slipping faster. I try to ease the skid by finding activities to occupy him, to give him a sense of accomplishment. Many things he once did easily aren’t possible now. It has been a long time since he could cook anything, not even fried eggs or bubble and squeak. Sometimes he even forgets how to make a cup of tea.

I waited too long for the right time to introduce these “sort or organize” ideas I found online. But on his own, perhaps prompted by some brain tweak that Alzheimer’s patients experience, he’s been doing many of them for months, maybe years. I offer them here, for readers looking for in-home occupational therapy.

Pencils long to short on his desk.

Favorite old tools.

Statehood quarters, alphabetically.

Integrated cutlery.

Sort or organize…

• …nails, screws, and other hardware. Peter has long since sorted, by size and age, his collection of antique hammers and other old tools.
• …nail polish and lipsticks, sorting by color, brand or on a scale of 1-10 by preference. Not bloody likely, he’d say to this one, but I might push him to tackle it.
• …buttons, using muffin tins to sort by color, size or style. Not even the antique buttons my mother collected piqued his interest.
• …coins, according to date, value or place of origin. Ah yes, he stacks coins, wraps others, and bands paper currency he brought home from our travels and his business trips to Europe and Japan.
• …the pantry, arranging cans and jars by size, brand or contents. Unfortunately for me, he does this often. I want my pantry to be organized the way I want it organized — tomato products together, vinegars and oils, all condiments, and so on. He likes everything lined up like soldiers, no matter their culinary purpose. (I’ve declared the pantry off limits, for all the good that does.)
• …the silverware drawer, rearranging the order of the forks, spoons, and knives. Peter often reorganizes our two sets of everyday cutlery. He likes the two sets separate from each other, and I don’t give a hoot about that. I prefer all dinner forks in one compartment, all salad forks in another, likewise all soup spoons, all dessert spoons, and so on.
• …playing cards into decks that match, or into suits within a deck, or by numbers. He’s been doing this for months, endlessly. He hates that my canasta decks are the same on the backs and tosses them aside because they don’t suit his orderly sensibilities.
• M&Ms, using muffin tins to sort by color. Choose one color to eat. Haven’t tried this yet, but I have a feeling he’d eat all of them before they made it from bag to tin, all except the green ones, that is. “Green candy isn’t good,” he’d say.

Just a few years ago, Peter would’ve laughed at the thought of doing such silly activities. Now, they calm him, and give him a sense of purpose, in his increasingly purposeless world.

Header photo: Stacked coins in his closet.

2016 National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ contest finalist.