My 87-year-old mother hides food in her bedroom. In the drawer, in tissues, etc. Says she didn't then goes through the kitchen drawers. What can we do?

This is what dementia looks like, she needs to live where there is 24/7 supervision.

This is one of many possible dementia behaviors. She’s lost the ability to reason and make good decisions as her brain is under attack and sadly dying. In the home, if you don’t want this to happen, the choice is to cut off her access to food, a lot of effort and vigilance on your part, or watch her 24/7, very tiring for caregivers.

Don’t question her about it. It will only upset you both.

Some people padlock the frig and pantry. Seems a bit extreme. I guess it depends on whether she is taking a big ham or a crust of bread. You could limit the places you store the type food items she is attracted to.

Cameras might be helpful to spend less time looking for it. Those could be placed in her room, in the kitchen or dining area. You might detect a pattern.

Fewer hiding places in her room might be helpful. But it seems you already know where to look.

Or you might give her a large ziplock for her drawer and ask her to put what she needs in the ziplock. You could even hand the bag to her at the table to put anything she wants in it.

Know that this behavior will pass. She will start doing something else that her mental condition compels her to do.

Best to manage your own anxiety about her losses or they can overwhelm you. I’m sorry that you and mom are dealing with this no win situation.

If she's living in your house lock the cupboards and the fridge. She gets only what you give her and don't allow any food in her bedroom.

If she's living alone, she should not be.

Yikes! Mice!

I think, sadly, there needs to be lots more supervision now. Anywhere with food stuffs is going to have to have special locks. Easy enough with drawers and cabinets but the refrigerator is something else again. And quite honestly this is hard to monitor if your mom is quietly sneaking the end of that steak in her napkin, to take to eat later. And then forgets about it.

I can't imagine anything you can do other than vigilant reminders and monitoring. But I do have a funny story to lighten your day a bit:

When my brother's car crash occurred, we had to leave SF emergently to fly to Palm Springs where we were for a week. Left the heat on too high. But worse, I left a drawer in my tiny "room of one's own", where typically I read, full of six new boxes of Good N Plenty candies. (Back when I ate them; I've switched to Red Hots).
Periodically in this 1870s built old Italianate we will get a mouse or two to deal with. Usually in the winter, and this was February. It's usually not tough once we find the new ingress and address it, and use the humane traps to get them. But this time we were gone for a week.
Came home to a very warm house, and to the boxes accessed, the candy coating nibbled off, the licorice eaten, and a very dead mouse at the bottom of the stairs.
My sad mouse story and I am sticking to it.

My dad hid food in drawers, in his pockets, in and under his bed, also threw food out the door and window into the yard when he had dementia. In his case, I suspect he was hiding food mostly because he did NOT want to eat it. He did the same with pills. He also might have been hiding what he DID want to eat (candy and ice cream) so others would not take it from him or criticize him. He also just plain forgot where he put it or would do stuff like eat strawberry ice cream, but spit the bits of strawberry on the floor, the table, or on his bed, wherever he happened to be, then it was like they didn’t exist as far as he was concerned. My mom was not willing to monitor him while he ate.

He would also open food containers, like packages of cookies, and just leave them in the cabinet, ripped open. (So yes, risk of mice and roaches).

We just had to clean it up. It sucks. Like everything about dementia.

Take her to a neurologist and get her dementia diagnosed as that is what it sounds like she has.
And then you start learning all you can about this horrific disease of dementia so you will be better prepared for what lies ahead.

Hoarding is a common behavior problem with dementia patients. It can be a precursor to developing Alzheimer's and dementia.

The following is what I wrote in my recent book "Dementia Care Companion",

Hoarding is most commonly seen in Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and Lewy body dementia. Around 23 percent of dementia patients develop hoarding behavior, typically in the early and middle stages of their illness.
Patients hoard all kinds of stuff. They collect, organize, fold and package them, put them away in nooks and crannies, and then spend many busy hours searching in various drawers, cabinets, and wardrobes to rediscover and unpack the items, only to repackage and store them again.
Hoarding typically occurs in tandem with obsessive-compulsive behavior, overeating, and pilfering. What all these behaviors have in common is an underlying sense of anxiety, impairment in impulse control, and memory loss. The patient is trying to get a grip on a life that is increasingly out of their control, with a mind that is no longer able to hold on.
Hoarding is also seen in some older individuals who do not have dementia. Hoarding in older individuals may be a precursor to dementia and a warning sign.

How to Handle Hoarding
Although hoarding can be challenging for the caregiver, it does not help to get angry or scold the patient. Patience, creativity, and humor are better ways of handling all kinds of behavioral problems, and hoarding is no exception.
·        Find out what drives the hoarding behavior and try to remove the cause. Is the patient worried that their stuff may get lost or stolen? When they spread, repackage, and store items, are they trying to reassure themselves that they can find the items again? Are they bored from inactivity and a lack of meaningful involvement with the daily household affairs?
·        What do they collect and where do they store them? Are the collected items perishable? Are they valuable? By knowing the types of items that the patient likes to collect and where they stash them, you can better decide your next steps.
·        Reduce the number of drawers and wardrobes that the patient uses. Label drawers to clearly show what’s inside. You can write “socks,” “underwear,” etc. on sticky notes, then attach the notes to drawers. Or, you can affix pictures to drawers, indicating their contents.
·        Make life easy for the patient. Use a large plastic basket for the collected items so the patient can easily find them in one place and pack them again when finished.
·        If a particular type of hoarding does not pose a hazard, let it be. But, if the hoarding creates risks, such as food that spoils or clutter that presents a fall hazard, find ways to remove the risk.
·        Avoid removing or discarding hoarded items as this may add to the patient’s anxiety. Find other ways to remove any risks. For example, if hoarded food has spoiled, replace it with fresh food.
·        The patient may agree to donate some of the items to charity. Take this opportunity to quickly remove those items from view. If the patient finds them again, they’ll likely hoard them again.
·        When going shopping, plan ahead to avoid situations where the patient can re-purchase items they have just discarded. If they come across the same items, they will likely buy them again.
·        Do not try to persuade the patient to give up hoarding. They cannot follow your reasoning. Even if you could convince them, they would forget it a few moments later.
·        Try to channel their energy to more productive activities like helping to set the dinner table, making salad, and folding laundry.

I think that the best thing to do is to place your mum into care. That's what I expect my daughter to do for me when I'm no longer able to reason well enough to look after myself properly.
I say "when" because my mum and many of her siblings were all affected by dementia, so I think it's fairly likely.

Have your mom evaluated as it looks like dementia symptoms. Time for facility placement.