Life admin / mental load - let’s have your outsourcing inspiration!

Well done you for having the time and brain space for this stuff. Some of us can manage without help and others need help. We’re all different.

I outsource a lot of this stuff because I work very long hours in a high stress job, plus do various voluntary roles, have elderly parents needing help themselves and have three kids and a dog. I need help with life stuff and have the cash to buy it. Others have less cash but more time/brain space, or are just better able to cope. Mental load might be guff to you, but you do understand that everyone’s circumstances are different, right?

Back on topic, a friend of mine swears by her virtual PA. She just pays for the hours she needs. The PA does things like pay bills, research insurance renewals, put school and social events in the diary etc. I haven’t tried it because I think it only works if you hand over all of your logs ins etc, which I’m not comfortable with, and I think it probably takes as long to instruct someone to buy a kids birthday party gift as it does to order something from Amazon. But my friend loves it.

Well apart from being significantly less financially well off then OP I never understand the whole mental load.

Diary has all information re: school holidays, appointments, holidays, trips away, medical appointments, car appointments, birthdays and so on.

Check it on a Friday. Plan anything that needs organising for the next week.
All bags etc are packed and kits sorted for the week. Shopping ordered etc. Done and dusted. No more thought needed and all four of us know what is going on.

House is cleaned regularly by us and surprisingly we all survive and are fed. Just takes a small amount of planning.

If booking holidays, activities or meals out is stressful dont do it. Simple.

And me! 😆

I can manage my own life admin but draw the line at anyone else such as neighbours and randoms. Earlier today I was sorting out my Tesco shopping (a job I absolutely loath) when someone tapped at the kitchen door. It was a neighbour wanting something. I told her I cant open the door there are bags of shopping on the floor to be sorted out. Come back later. If she does she will find the drive gate locked and no way to access any door without being on one of my cameras. I wont be answering. Oh dear, I forgot all about you/didnt hear you.

At 82 weaponised incompetence/deafness /poor memory works a treat.

Absolutely agree, especially the whole school group WhatsApp chats. I saw on a post someone suggesting adding their husband so they could see just how much goes on, but isn't the chat group usually just a repeat of information the school sends out anyway? Apart from the year 6 chat where parents had to organise the leavers party and vote on options, the other years it's pointless as long as you are on the school mailing list. All messages get sent via them, the parent group is purely screenshots of information that is readily available (term dates calendar off the website for example) and mums getting into a frenzy over nothing!

Doing less is rarely on these list, there is less load if you and the family do less. The kids don't need endless afterschool activities which require outfits and lifts, pick 1 each. There is less to tidy and clean, if you have less stuff in the first place. School whatap groups etc can all be ignored.
Finding a tricks for the things that bother you the most is helpful. Cleaner, ironing, meal boxes all help. Although a chef, butler and chauffeur would be great, Id need a huge lottery win!

I have outsourced the floor cleaning to a robot hoover and the preclean tidy to DD8. Ours was quite cheap and dumb so it needs to be tidy before it can start but the reward is a clean floor.

Isnt it all about how you chose to spend your money (if you have spare) I quite like cleaning. Well actually I really like cleaning, I'm more likely to be your cleaner than have a cleaner. But I hate cooking. So I buy m.and s and use the time I have saved to read. Which I love. I don't see that as outsourcing. I see it as a sensible decision to best utilise my time and money. I'm also aware I'm v lucky yo be able to make those choices. Lots and lots of people can't.

We do tumble down meals rather than batch cooking and have a fussy eater. If anything it's her that is happy to eat the same thing every day.

We tend to buy large enough joints of meat for 2-3 days and then to use it in 3 different meals. For example - roast pork, veg and gravy day 1, swine pie day 2 and chickpea and pork pasta sauce for the 3rd day.

It means that we have 2 or 3 days a week where we need to be thinking about cooking and the rest of the week it comes down to what carb and veg we want to eat on that day and the dinner can be thrown together in 15 minutes

I think it's an interesting question.

I do actually outsource some stuff, but not by directly employing others.

I do most of my shopping online. Once the lists are set up, it's pretty easy, takes something like 5 minutes.

Meal kits, there's loads of providers out there, some give you all the ingredients, some just give you the relevant spices and a shopping list for the ingredients - which I integrate into my online shop.

Everything is set to direct debit with a scheduled audit once every 3 months, e.g. entertainment and internet is one block, utilities is another block, debts and spending is another block. Basically, I do one block a month (normally on the 8th) to stay on top of things.

I also deal with all health and wellbeing as soon as it comes in, don't put anything off so there's a growing 'to do' list.

Obviously, I use calendars and reminders.

For me it is the holding everything that needs doing in my head that I find difficult.

We have a family calendar which has a lot of regular items in it. The thing that has made a big difference is having the bins reminder each week. We were looking it up every week what bins could
go out. 2 minutes setting it up now saves us 5 minutes physical time and 20 minutes of i must look up if it's recycling today

My daughters school has the option of downloading school holidays as a calendar invite which makes that a lot easier

We have shared to do lists and a white board for things to remember and a paper calendar

We use subscribe and save / subscription for a lot of need once a month things

I bulk buy birthday cards and presents for birthday parties. I get the 25p cards in Tesco and a bunch of 12 pack party bags fillers and combine to give presents depending on what I think the friend would like.

Outsourcing to DH - same as others here. All tasks get split and don’t get involved in the ones you don’t do. (Ie don’t criticise or make comments - it’s been outsourced). Eg I do doctors Dh does dentist.

I appreciate that if you are single the above is not available but
outsourcing to DD and DS also works. Eg school uniform washing - they learn a life skill and after the first few times of not having something to wear they soon get (a bit) organised (usually a last minute Sunday night !).

Because I can afford it I also get cleaner to change all the bedding and towels then leave me a bag that I can drop for a service wash. It’s been one of my favourite luxuries.

lol. I wouldn’t employ them for that reason alone 😱

Also £100 a week for the chef plus ingredients *faints

WHY do people go on thread about "OUTSOURCING inspiration" which cannot be anything but costly, to complain that people don't want to spend money to outsource? 😂

Who do you think you can outsource anything to , and they will do it for free?

Yep. This sums it up. Has always been so and continues to be so, pay someone else to do it only works if you have the money. 🙄

I looked up Urban PA, it came up on LinkedIn.

About us
At Urban PA we value our customers, and that it is a privilege to be a part of there daily routine.

They cant even spell their correctly....

Some of these are out of reach for many people due to affordability.

I really don't think many 'ordinary' families could justify the cost. I do my own batch cooking.

I just stopped reminding DH about family birthdays or buying them presents. He never asked me to, but I took it upon myself, then decided a few years ago it's a bit more admin I don't need and it's not my responsibility.

Absolutely. I was trying to think of a nicer way of saying "well off woman shows how life is when you have money " but you did it better than me

This is an obvious point but one a lot of people find hard - completely leaving some things to DH. Completely. E.g. he does cubs/beavers admin, I am not even on the WhatsApp group/mailing list. He takes them, pays the subs, puts the camps in the diary, packs for the camping, sorts the uniform.

Completely agree with this. IME it doesn't make things easier to do some tasks jointly plus you end up with even more hassle if you don't completely agree on how to do something.

Touch it once- similar to PP, if something can be done right now do it right now.

I also largely agree that the whole mental load concept can be unhelpful and where people talk about the mental load being too much the actual issue is often just lazy partners not pulling their weight.

Good to see the tone police out and about this fine morning.

This

I persuaded DH to retire (actually he suggested it and I said YES PLEASE).
We are between cleaners (she moved back to Poland, how unreasonable of her!) but we have an ironing service that picks up and drops off).
DH does the "retired person's walk to M&S" 2-3 times a week for stuff we've run out of.
We have a large blackboard in the kitchen which is for shopping we've run out of. Originally it was for meal plans but now we plan 4 weekly.
We get a veg box that's mixed one week, fruit the other.
DH has always been a grown-up about children's arrangements but now he does more than half of them.
We actually only get a supermarket delivery once every 3-4 weeks but I use Cherry Pick to plan about 3-4 more interesting meals, the rest are rotated though we do add in new meals that have been successful.
Every Friday is takeaway and movie night. We take it in turns to choose.
I try and batch cook my lunches - I actually have 2 lunches each of two different curries plus one serving of fritatta in the freezer so won't need to cook tomorrow.

No I havent but thats a good idea.

Have you ever thought of becoming a psychologist? You have amazing insight and would be able to help so many people!