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

You’ve just outsourced your responsibility to someone else though. They’re still got to be done.

The teacher now has to spend time chasing you because you can’t be bothered to fill out a permission slip.

Miss enough important bills on time and you’ll find your credit score is impacted.

Your poor child has a teacher that is fully aware that his parents leave him to sort out his own schooling. The #1 predictor of educational attainment is having involved, supportive parents.

My almost 4 year old is disabled and has a lot of appointments. Physiotherapy every week plus others in between at certain times of year. The part that takes up all my time is actually taking her to the appointments, which I wouldn't call "life admin". Arranging the appointments maybe but most of that happens automatically. She has an x-ray next week - at her appointment 6 months ago the doctor said "We'll do another x-ray in 6 months time". A few weeks later a letter arrived with an appointment for an x-ray followed by consultation with the doctor. All I had to do was add the date to the calendar. Dealing with invalidity insurance (mostly applying to get things approved) is admin. The specialists do most of the work there luckily, we just get sent something to sign. I'd just label all of that "disability-related stuff" if I had to since only part of it is actually"admin". If I include dentist appointments and regular paediatrician checkups that all children here have (I live abroad) I'd say "child name's health stuff". We also have a 5-week old now but she will hopefully be less complicated 😅. But if I include her regular check ups it's kids' health stuff.

We've recently signed the newborn up for nursery starting next year - that's admin I guess. Tomorrow I have to hand in the form for the older one to attend the nursery Halloween party - that's admin, but buying her costume (which we did on Saturday) is shopping, not admin. That can all be lumped under the umbrella of "nursery stuff" - along with remembering new spare clothes or nappies/wipes (she isn't toilet trained due to her disability). Letting nursery know when she'll be picked up early for appointments (I write them a list for the month) is nursery-related and disability-related, but kids' stuff either way.

Taxes, paying bills are admin. We don't own a car and we live in a rented apartment so gutters aren't my problem 😅. Making sure kids have clean clothes... so doing laundry? That comes under housework, not admin. Sorting out the outgrown clothes isn't really admin either - it can go under kids' stuff. Remembering to buy nappies is pretty much the same as remembering to buy toilet roll or bin bags. If other people people want to label all the things I've listed "admin" who am I to argue? It's all needs doing no matter what you call it!

Mental load = remembering all of those things need doing (thank you Google calendar for keeping track of all the appointments!). I don't think I've ever actually referred to the "mental load" out loud though.

I think we're starting to come full circle on this one. Although it certainly was at one point, I don't think 'the hustle' is aspirational anymore. I'm often being told by people that I have a lot on my plate, that I need to rest more - I don't feel that way at all! Most of the time I don't have any trouble managing what I have to do and I feel I get plenty of rest. I often hear people invoking others to slow down and not take on so much. I don't remember that going back a few years. I also regularly see posts on social media glorifying resting and chilling out, whereas in the past one I particularly remember appearing often was something like 'the reward for hard work well done is the opportunity to do more hard work'. Yuk. I think we're more in a phase of competitive zen-ness - except maybe on Mumsnet.

@Plinkers explained why - clearly I thought.

Why on earth should they work two jobs? One paid and one unpaid.

I think some women use it as a excuse to not work once they have kids etc.

Being the only adult and doing it for yourself and children feels less overwhelming than another adult just not doing it. I wouldn't mind feeding the cat every morning if I was on my own with a cat. but if DH got up, breezed past the kitchen and didn't do it, it would feel like a task for me which would feel like a load.

OK so why was i and many other single women/ parents capable of doing this stuff without bring overwhelmed if it all needs to be shared?

Or you can just not do it. With the school forms, I find the school will contact you if it's something important like a trip and, if it's not, it's fine to drop the ball on it.

I told my husband when the kids started school that he could deal with the forms and to my knowledge he's not done a single one and the sky hasn't fallen in yet.

Our older child has started bringing us stuff to sign for school and remembering his own stuff on own clothes/Christmas jumper days. He also organises his own homework now since the teacher had a word with him about it not getting done. So if any of the school stuff is important, he'll pick it up.

Likewise, if you don't pay important bills on time, chances are someone will contact you about it. There's very rarely any need to stress.

Dentists appointments don't need to be every 6 months.

You don't need to buy and wrap birthday presents, a tenner in an old envelope is fine.

A lot of this stuff can just go by the wayside.

I think Life Admin is a useful phrase - talking to a friend earlier I said had spent the early morning doing some life admin and she knew exactly what I meant.

I did some shredding of old bank statements, filed the latest management accounts for my flat, chased up blood results, booked concert tickets, and renewed a library book - nothing exciting but needed to be done.

Well then their mum doesn't get a present. I've been a single parent working full time most of my life. Never had a need to make a thing of life admin. Its just things to you need to do. No biggie

I guess I was referring to some of the lists on here that include things like signing consent form for school. Just come on, if you list every activity that takes a second to do then yes you look busy. Or 'paying a bill'. What does that actually involve in this day and age. You can do it while you watch TV

Stuff.

It is just language and I'm not interested in competitive business - I'm the first to admit that my life is very low pressure compared to some people I know. However - and again this will partly be down to where I live and my personal circumstances - the idea that bill paying should just take me a couple of minutes just doesn't work. It would if I just had my own bills to pay but as in your case, @ruethewhirl , I also have other people's bills to deal with. Upthread I'd said six but actually there are seven of us for whom I'm responsible and paying seven lots of bills, organising seven lots of appointments etc. simply does take up a lot more time than doing the same for one or two people.

Due to medical conditions I regularly have to make appointments and yep, it should be a two minute job. We have a health service app on which we can do it - except it never bloody works. This means you have to make a phonecall to book appointments which means various menus to go through and hideous amounts of time on hold. I decided to circumvent that once by stopping in at the health centre to do it as it's very close to home, but was in the queue for 25 minutes before I had to give up because I had somewhere else to be. So not only has the task not been done but still needs to be done but I've wasted another half an hour getting nothing done. When I finally get that appointment and arrange the appropriate transport, childcare, work cover etc. to attend it, chances are I'll receive a phonecall changing it to another date/time and then have to change all these arrangements around it. It's most certainly not a two minute job. I can't do phonecalls from the car as something broken means my mobile doesn't connect to the car speakers.

I consider myself pretty efficient but that means nothing when the people and systems I have to work with don't perform in the same way. I live in a country that has a whole industry that I haven't seen in existence elsewhere, which is to do people's paperwork. Our bureaucracy is so onerous that everyone has someone to do it in the same way people in other countries have an accountant/doctor/dentist/lawyer. That's how difficult it can be to get things done. We're also in a position where systems still haven't caught up with technology and everything closes for three hours every afternoon. I can't sit in front of Netflix in the evening and get these things done because so much still can't be done online and I can't call and do it because there's no-one left in the office at that time...

This 'life admin' doesn't bother me that much. I kind of consider it part of my 'job' in the sense that my husband and I have divided up who does what pretty fairly and this is simply part of my duty just as he has his. However the idea that it's always as quick, simple and easy as some people here are making out just doesn't correspond with my experience at all.

DH and I must live very boring lives. Bills and mortgage comes out of our account on the same day each month. We check our account on the app every morning, which takes maybe a minute. Once a year we have our insurance renewals, again it doesn't seem to take too long to sort that out as most of it is auto filled anyway.
Forms for the DCs, usually just require a signature and a few quid. Again a minute or 2, and then pinned to the noticeboard.

We have a young dog, he is insured but we've never needed to use it. He goes to the vet once a year for his vaccinations and that's it.

We rarely go on holiday, but even if we do it doesn't take too long to sort it out. I consider that quite 'fun' admin anyway.

So yes, I'm not sure if we are just very basic or simply don't put too much thought into how much time it all takes.

This. Stuff like this exists; it's life.

For many years, people just dealt with it the best they could, but now, some have decided to give it a name and turn it into a bit of a competition regarding who has more life admin or mental load than others. When in truth, some people just have more complex lives than others, some are better at dealing with stuff than others, and some just dont care about it and shirk their responsibilities in life. At times, it's a mixture of all the above.

When I hear life admin or mental load, I do tend to roll my eyes and think, just get on with it and deal with it, and if it's not working for you, what are you going to do to fix it then? - Just stop calling it that! IT'S JUST LIFE!

It's definitely a thing. However from what I've seen the mumsnet objection to it seems to be when a house wife, or stay at home mum to school age children list it within their daily tasks that keep them so busy and productive. When generally unless you are dealing with elderly parents, disabled children, managing a large estate etc, then life admin isn't really much of a 'thing'. This isn't criticising house wives or sahm's by the way, I don't understand why people seem almost competitive by these threads of who has it harder, who is the most productive etc, no idea why people (women) feel the need to justify their existence so much.

The mental load is definitely a thing however.

I do feel sorry for people who have children at school now, with all the constant WhatsApp messages, rather than one or two newsletters per half term.

Also I know that people with frail aged parents can have an onerous lot of admin and chasing around to do, negotiating with agencies, carers finance etc can be a nightmare. We feel fortunate really that all our 4 parents died relatively suddenly (nicer for them, too), if you see what i mean.

I love this, it reminds me of going with my mum to the "gas board" showroom in town to pay the bill in cash. My dad got paid on cash every Thursday and I remember him handing the majority over to mum over tea every week, so I guess she was in charge of 'life admin'. I've always done all the admin for my husband and the family and even now the 'children' live abroad the younger DS (29) will occasionally ask me for help with forms. I've always booked the holidays and chosen most of the destinations etc too. I worry about my husband being able to keep on top of things if I dropped dead, but I'm so used to doing it all that I'm reluctant to delegate anything.

I think if you referred to it as what it is (caring) then people would probably be much more understanding.