If you don't consider life admin to be a thing...

AIB, Irish bank.

For sure there is stuff that needs to be done - accounts balanced, finances figured out and budgeting, housework and laundry, appointments for health, shopping, food prep, keeping an eye on kid's homework and screen time, mental health, etc.etc. - but this is really not a full time job and cannot be seen as equally onerous as having an actual job.

You just need to be efficient and use spreadsheets, electrical appliances, apps, online shopping etc. and arrange your life around it. It's normal adult life.

I'm with you - it's just martyrdom.

It would never once have occurred to me to get DH's parents a present - just as he would never check to make sure I'd got my parents something - I mean, why on earth would he?

I have loads of life admin ( by which I mean everything that is not work and not housework and not fun!) I hate it. I have to think and plan for four people ( H with very poor executive thinking). Kids with their own needs too. I work full time and I find all the additional work for four people on top of working full time is just overwhelming.

They're just things we need to do in order to live in the society we do. My mother certainly never called it 'life admin'. I really do hate the current trend to label absolutely everything.
Everyone has these chores in life, some more than others.
I do think it actually took less time in the past to just go the bank/post office/doctors etc, now you have to get through multiple online security or wait on hold for 40 minutes only to get cut off, and all the frustrations that come with that! I can walk to my doctor's quicker. Personally I feel technology has made our lives more difficult in many ways, and certainly more frustrating.

Agree, it’s a choice , a woman does not have to be “entirely responsible “ for her husband’s families stuff. I hate the female trope of oh he’s so useless it won’t get done if I don’t do it. It his mother doesn’t get a present how is it anything to do with her daughter in law?

sorry I am over reacting but it really pushes my buttons , probably because I had a martyring mother.

I dont label it or separate it out as a thing. It's just something that needs doing as part of being an adult.

Obviously you have more on your plate dealing with your parent, and I can see those with other caring responsibilities or sen children might have more, but I genuinely don't see how people make such a big deal of it. Ive got four kids, two dogs, two cats, I drive...'admin' tasks take such very little time. Maybe 20.mins top a week, including filling out school forms, parent pay, paying for school lunches, insurance stuff.

Banking - I don’t get what ‘banking’ people are constantly doing that takes so much time.

This one completely befuddles me. This mysterious “banking” that needs to be done.

Yes, in ye olden days, when you had to balance cheque books, check whether cheques had been cashed, keep a track of your balance as a result, maybe actually go to the bank to pay in some cheques or cash or go to the cashpoint to withdraw cash for the week - fair enough, they’re errands that take time. But literally none of that has to be done any more and some of it hasn’t even been a thing for at least ten years.

My money gets paid in automatically, my bills come out automatically, if I need to pay for something in a shop I do it with my phone, so I don't even have to use a cashpoint any more and can't remember the last time I did. The most I have to do is keep an eye on my work bank account to make sure my clients have paid their monthly invoices, and the app even notifies me when one of them pays me (and I count this as work time anyway, not admin).

What on earth is this mythical “banking” that people are spending hours doing?

The 'mental load' even applies to things like being entirely responsible for arranging Christmas plans and for making sure his parents had a present.

But why on earth would it ever occur to you to do that? He's a grown adult, just let him get on with it.

Using your two examples - car tax is paid by direct debit so I never have to think about it, and dentist appointments are booked six months in advance after the last one.

I just honestly never think about those things. My bills are all automated.

It's an excuse for misandry and self pity.

Same way as I don't feel the need to label having a shower and getting dressed as 'work day preparation activity' or meeting my friends as 'social network maintenance'. Because it sounds a bit grandiose and daft.
I think its useful to recognise that stuff needs doing and takes time, especially when one half of a couple does the lions share and the other doesn't seem to recognise it, and the label is useful then I suppose.
But for myself, to call it 'life admin' feels a bit like trying to professionalise something routine and like something people who don't work say to pretend they do.

The 'mental load' even applies to things like being entirely responsible for arranging Christmas plans and for making sure his parents had a present.

Then don't do it. Buying Christmas and birthday presents for my husband's relatives is his problem, not mine.

I’m torn on this. On the one hand, I agree with the posters that say that it all takes 5 minutes on your phone each time. However, and this is personal circumstances dependent, it’s the sheer volume and relentlessness that I think becomes overwhelming. No sooner have you spent your 5 minutes filling in a form about a school trip, than you get an email about the Halloween disco. Now you need to both pay for said disco, put it in the calendar, figure out who is picking them up after school that day (because now they can’t get the school bus home), possibly shift some stuff around in your work calendar, buy them a Halloween costume (can’t get away with using last year’s every year although I do try!), and then remember in the morning for them to take it to school. Then they come home from school saying they need a shoebox and some presents to put into it for Project Christmas Child. You’re not so much of a grinch that you will refuse to do it, and you can add the stuff to your weekly shop (which you do now before you forget), but now you have to find a shoe box. Actually, 2, because you have 2 children. Then your mum rings to ask you why her internet isn’t working, or to ask if you can take her to a hospital appointment next Tuesday, or to tell you she isn’t coping and needs more care visits. Then the toilet breaks and you need a plumber. Or the window cleaner drops by and you have an invoice to pay. And you’re trying to work full time and feed your children, and you, know, have a life, and sometimes it all just feels like a lot! And yes, it’s just admin related to life, but it does need doing, and it’s the thinking about it that becomes overwhelming. And typically, it’s the women who do the thinking about it. Men might do some of the stuff, but they don’t typically do the ‘project management’ so to speak. And that thinking is usually done at the same time as other thinking - like a full time job - so it feels, to coin an Internet meme, like you’ve got 20 different tabs open in your brain at once.

I wouldn’t class ‘visiting my parents’ as ‘life admin’. I don’t have PoA for my parents. I’m sorry for your loss.💐I have five siblings, two parents, and various friends I buy presents and cards for, but I wouldn’t class that as ‘life admin’ either. Taking your children to school or the doctor is just parenting, the same way as reading them stories, buying them shoes and helping with homework is! — all school forms are now online and couldn’t be easier. It’s no longer a matter of digging through the bottom of a school bag looking for envelopes. Car service, MOT, gutters, insurance etc are once a year. Going to the dentist/optician are just normal health stuff — other than making time to go there, it doesn’t take any time of effort. Next appointment booked before I leave. Doctor only if I’m unwell.

And DH does half this stuff, anyway.

It's invented by SAHMs, particularly SAHMs of school age children to expand their workload.

Somehow husband and I managed to both work full time without this drama.

Agree and its usually only an issue when a posters partner isn’t sharing the load and the op is being a martyr by not saying she feels it’s not fairly split or she has had a conversation and he’s just a knob - which I would suggest would have manifested itself prior to any life admin.

so today my child is at the orthodontist. She’s been going for three years, I’ve never been, my husband takes her and makes the appointments, I don’t get involved. I don’t feel the need to know when they are or remind him. So when I’m paying lunch money or school trips or whatever I’m not doing it through the lens of annoyance or irritation that I’m having to do it or that he’s a lazy sod . I think that makes an absolute world of difference. I also have honest conversations with him rather than seething.

Half the problem is that it is so bitty, though!

For me, things that happen frequently, even if they take up a good chunk of time, don't add much to 'mental load' because I'm aware of them and generally only just did them so there isn't a great deal to change in prep for the next time.

It is the literally hundreds of things that require 10 minutes attention once a year that cause a huge lag of constantly having to scan my life a few weeks ahead to work out if I'm about to be ambushed by any of them, as there will still be negative consequences if I drop any of those balls (possibly big ones, like becoming an illegal driver if I don't pay car tax or getting dropped by the dentist if I miss more than one appointment ever).

I think life admin is a valid and useful catch all term. Although I tend to refer to it by the sexy title of ‘my admin list’
I’m a single parent, work full time, so when emails come in on anything school/house related (which is daily at a minimum) it’s very rarely a good time to deal with them there and then. Everything gets added up to sort on the weekend and it does mount up to quite a lot. Some weeks more than others.

PP here insisting it’s very little I suspect have less experience with sick children or pets, dodgy old cars, dodgy old houses requiring repair, elderly and dependent family, and also possibly more money. Probably also have another adult in the house managing some of that decision making process and work too.

Sorting out insurance
Remembering to ring them up before auto renewal so they reduce the price
Splitting savings of >£85 between institutions
Moving money to the best interest rate
Sending documents to the accountant and keeping records of things that are tax deductible
Documentation with council re things like postal votes from time to time.

That's just off the top of my head and there's loads more.

And I also imagine it feels like more of a job/chore if you have to do it all. You see a lot of posters seething with resentment because their partner just doesn't do any of the life admin at all

I don't label them anything, they're just part of life, stuff needs doing. I don't give it a name

I've got a lot of stuff to do. If I was being totally honest, I might replace the phrase with shit to sort out.

For me, it's not that this stuff doesn't exist, it's that I don't see it as a huge task that needs labelling. It's mostly just things I do while I'm doing other things.

Today, for example, I had to pay the dog walker, pay my therapist and book my car into the garage to get a new tyre. I did the first two while drinking my morning coffee and messing about on here, and booked my car in when I drove past the garage after work.

I run my own business too and there are always things to do but they just get done while I'm watching TV, mostly.