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

At one time I would have disagreed and said there was no such thing as life admin. I don't class paying bills (which is done automatically anyway), or doctor appointments or remembering birthdays as life admin.
Now it's a thing in my life. Trying to sort a special school for DS involves, meetings, appointments, sending evidence, endless calls and emails. When my mum was alive it was even harder (she had dementia) so it was even more appointments and meetings.
I guess I just don't refer to it as life admin, just the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through so your child can actually access an education.

@ruethewhirl I wouldn’t describe anything to do with your mum’s health and care as life admin - it’s a caring responsibility that takes up a massive amount of time and headspace. It’s not something you can try and compare to paying bills and making packed lunches.

I agree with you OP. You can simultaneously group all those home/family related admin tasks together in your head and/or decide to do them together but also not think is is a huge deal

And that extends, doesn't it? If you haven't lived some of these paperwork-creating situations, you have no idea what it's like till it happens to you.

I think the problem arises in a partnership when one person is doing all these tasks and the other doesn’t even have to think about them.

OP, I think part of the disconnect here is that you've taken on significantly caring responsibilities for your mum, and you're describing them as "life admin".

There is nothing inherently wrong with calling them that - you can call them whatever you like - but for most people, "life admin" doesn't typically refer to caring for someone with dementia but rather the basic stuff such as paying bills, booking medical appointments etc. The admin that most people have to do doesn't tend to be that onerous, so they think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

I care for my dad who is in the early stages of dementia, and also for another relative whose dementia is more advanced. I know that it can involve a lot of work, but it wouldn't occur to me to include the stuff that I do for family members in the category of "life admin" - in my head, they're in a completely separate category of "caring responsibilities".

If you have an organised mindset and just get on with things and are not an over thinker these sort of things are just very minor. Some people are just very efficient, I’m one of those people so it’s no bother. MIL isn’t and what I see is someone who is so inefficient in everything it means in her life she has never had spare time.

Nothing wrong with the label IMO

we have life admin - bills, insurance, car MOT, school stuff, dentist and docs appointments, kids parties, kids activities, family birthdays etc etc

house jobs - cleaning, washing clothes etc

I wouldn’t say that life admin is bank correspondence though. I don’t speak to or read anything from the bank regularly just move money around once a month when paid. Job done. I find there’s more life admin in having kids and everything that comes with school, appointments, parties, homework etc

Exactly - it would never occur to me that I needed to sit down and specifically devote a chunk of time to any of the stuff people list on here, I just do it naturally as part of everyday life.

Most of it gets done in front of the TV in the evenings or while I’m having a coffee, or even on the toilet while waiting for the washing machine to finish.

That sounds horrendously unbalanced to me - poor A!

“Life Admin” IMO, is all the little jobs that can be done by anyone in the family, but normally gets left to one person…. In my house we have reached a balance now
E.g.

1. Family of three adults, one working full-time (A), two not working (B & C)
2. A. does meal planning, shopping, cooking, clearing up (like filing paperwork, sorting out cupboards Etc.) as well as walking the dog in the evenings
3. B. does the general washing, garden and house maintenance, helps with shopping, cooking breakfast, clearing up after all cooking and walking the dog in the day
4. C. does own washing and supports B when required, also gets everything ready for the cleaner and will sort out areas of the house that are being repurposed. Also helps out by doing shopping for stuff that isn’t covered by the main Supermarket shop and does all the painting and decorating, which B. supports them with

The main issue is not whether any of these things individually are a big deal. Most women who are overwhelmed by 'life admin' or other small tasks are overwhelmed because they are responsible for everything. If you have to think of and either do or delegate every 5-minute admin task, every dishwasher, every bit of tidying, even drawing the curtains - that becomes a huge amount of stuff that you are responsible for on top of your paid work even when there may be several other people in the house who could actually be responsible for those tasks.

My sister's DP will just go off to work in the morning leaving all the curtains drawn, even if he was the first one up. The reason that's a problem is not because it's a big deal to open the curtains, it's because that is one of 500 small tasks that are entirely her responsibility. It was never discussed or negotiated, he just doesn't do it and that shows a lack of respect.

I find that most of the things you list take very little time. I don't really ever do any "banking". I don't have any loans, i know what i earn and i spend slightly less & a bit goes into a savings account on a direct debit. I've had the same current account since i was 10.

We don't often switch elec or gas billing company and when we do we find it takes minutes to compare rates online & sign up to a new one, same for the internet connection. All my bills just go on direct debit. About once every year or 2 dh and i spend half an hour just checking if stuff has gone up in price.

DD has some medical stuff but there's very little "correspondence" about it.

We only move mortgage fix every 5 years and again it doesn't take long.

I don't use pet insurance as i think its a bit of swizz. We just pay when we get the cats flea treated. I don't have any "general correspondence" on anything.

Are you a slower reader op or an overthinker? I have a friend who seems to spend a lot of time on "life admin" and over time I've realised, she takes much longer than me to read & understand letters or bills, and do the sorts of basic maths to check when a price has gone up etc. She can spend a morning reviewing energy tariffs on a comparison site picking apart which to go with, i will look at them & minutes and make a quick decision to go with one.

I think sometimes you spend as long on a job as you have time available

With tech you can do these things easily, in your breaks, while watching tv, handsfree phone in car etc etc.

But even 20 minutes a day is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I spend longer than that in the bathroom in the morning but don’t feel the need to categorise it.

Let’s be honest, most “admin” can be done on your phone while you sit on your arse and watch Netflix.

Even if it is 20 mins a day, that is less than 2% of the total minutes of a day, 2 hours a week. It is not a significant proportion of time. And it is broken into a couple of minutes here, couple minutes there. Not some huge burden.

If you said 2 hours a day, I would agree with you that it was a lot. And it would probably mean you were looking after others, such as elderly parents or kids with additional needs.

Personally, I think we have all become convinced everyone else is having a better time by what we see on social media. Ordinary life is boring and repetitive, not shiny and exciting, but the repeated noise suggesting it is some sort of weighty burden to suffer through is not helpful to anyone and only adds the stress. Where has our resilience gone to? Buried under a pile of 'life admin' in some sort of competition of who is busiest?

I do the spreadsheet thing too. Two things it the app won't do that the spreadsheet does:

1. Project forward your budget. It only tells you what is already spent. If you want to plan forward and never run out of money, you need a spreadsheet.
2. Segregates different categories most importantly shared costs with DH and his outgoings that should be shared with me so we can balance up once a month. That avoids any resentment or disagreement with a partner about who pays for what. I

You mean stuff our parents just got on with? I call it being a grown up

It’s just an absurdly corporate made up vibe .

I think maybe some of us are talking about apples and oranges here. A poster upthread asked why she’d name something that takes at most 20 minutes per month and my reaction is WTF?! I’m looking at a minimum of 20 minutes per day for this shit. Often more. Whether that’s due to differences in our lifestyles or sheer inefficiency on my part I have no idea, but it’s not an equal situation.