What exactly is ‘family admin’ ?

[LuckySeventhWave]

I have a calendar on the fridge door. If there’s a parents evening, after school club or dentist appointment I write it on there.

It takes about 12 seconds.

What are mums doing that warrants ‘time set aside per week for family admin’?

Booking the dentist appointments takes more than 12 seconds and some people are more efficient than others. Some people have more complicated lives than others.

Well apparently it’s hard work and worthy of being mentioned to me it’s Fuk all paying bills making kids dental appointments sorting car insurance like how hard is it it’s certainly. It worth saying I have to be a sahm as I do the family admin lol

Medical appointments, school appointments, vet appointments, form filling, car tax/insurance, house insurance, booking holidays, organising extra curriculur stuff including shopping for kit/equipment, registering dc for sports club/competitions...etc...etc

DD does loads of clubs and activities, goes to pre-school etc and I find myself spending a lot of time paying invoices, reading newsletters, arranging/rearranging classes etc. Booking medical appointments and chasing results. Researching and buying gifts (mostly online) for all 1,000,0001 family members. Organising family events (I have a huge family so it's usually once a month at least we do something). Writing meal plans and shopping lists for groceries.

I don't set time aside for it. It's just stuff that comes up and I deal with it as it arises. But if I add up all the time that I spend on it each week, it's very significant.

Two cars, three drivers insurance, tax Mot. House insurance, ultilities gas, electric.Doctors for family members, opticians, dentists. in the past few weeeks smear tests, blood pressure. thyroid checks, ECG, blood tests, cataract checks, psychiatrist.

Depends on your life.
I don't necessarily set time aside to do it but for example this week I have-
Rearranged dds eye therapy
Booked ds eye test
Booked ds parents evening
Organised show and tell for youngest ds
Filled in all the Xmas stuff on the calendar for everyone
Ordered the kids Xmas cards
Ordered school photos
Organised a handyman to come and fix a few things
Booked a carpet cleaner man to come before Xmas

It's not like this every week but the kids have lots of clubs and extra stuff going on that I need to remember and make notes of stuff they need for school.

Well surely it at least includes actually going to the appointments?

Slotting in appointments and activities around work is a pain. Then you realise one clashes with something else so which one do you call / email to reschedule.... aghh.
It's rarely as easy as writing it on the calendar.

Yeah writing it down takes 12 seconds

Well, when mine were young, dh and I would sit down together, with work diaries and the 'family calendar' and work out who was able to leave work early / get that child where they needed to be. Who was picking them up. Who else we were taking. Who we could ask for help if either neither of us could get there or we were trying to take collect other dc from somewhere, or had a meeting of our own.
Then of course, sometimes you have to do it with only one car.
then you have to work out when you can book the car in for the MOT.
Fir in who is able to cook the meal or do the shop or whatever around that.

Is that what you are thinking of ?

I don’t know that it’s that easy. I have:

• sports clubs and swimming lessons - have to be re booked/paid either termly or half termly
• after school clubs - similar
• babysitting/non standard childcare hours - this can be quite complex as we have a part time nanny so any variation can be a big pain/ need Grandparent help or booking a day off/ other babysitters. Who might cancel
• house bills - not a huge issue other than car insurance and house insurance which seem to take a lot more time than they should
• online shopping and meal planning. Not a huge job but regular and takes 20 mins a week minimum if I do it properly so that I don’t have to think about it again for the rest of the week
• holidays are a big one partic if trying to coordinate with family or friends
• clothes for kids - I buy most stuff online. I now know what I need/like/what fits but kids are starting to be more fussy
• handyman/ building work - our house is gently falling apart. We have done a couple of big jobs but can’t afford to totally remodel so there is a bit of doing the bare minimum to keep it going. Add to that living in London it can be really hard to find tradesman, get them to quite and get them to turn up. A lot of my day off is spent trying to get this sort of thing done
• monthly check on finances to make sure big picture goals are not unreasonable. Quarterly check that big picture goals are being met
• occasionally planning to meet friends. Happens less than I’d like (London)

But all my bills are paid automatically, it’s not like the old days of trudging up to the post office every month.
Also the car tax, house, car and pet insurance only come round once a year.

Oh yeah. That’s ignoring the ‘I will go to harvest if you go to meet the teacher tea’ Trade offs

Sorting out insurance, car tax, holidays.

Booking holiday childcare. Sorting out broken appliances (30 mins today sorting out a broken kitchen appliance).

Kids’ activities: booking them, organising competitions etc as a PP said, sorting and sewing uniforms.

Comparing schedules to make sure DH is not working late when I am working late.

Birthdays and Christmas: gifts, party planning, planning Christmas time.

Parents’ evening is an example. It’s not just writing it in the calendar, it’s chasing the paperwork to make the appointment, ensuring DC has given the paperwork in, checking that one parent can actually go on the appointment date given.

School plays etc, booking tickets, photocopying song sheets. Ensuring the date goes on the lists of dates DH needs to request to have off work. Calling in favours if one child needs to be at rehearsals and the other child needs to be somewhere else. Returning the favour by arranging to have someone else’s child for the same issue.

Taking the car to the garage, the pets to the vets.

School permission slips etc. Meal planning. It’s endless!

My dd does three sports competitively. Entry forms, extra practices, coordinating mine and dh’s diary to get her to the right place at the right time.

We also have ds (who does 5 different activities) and two jobs between us....

My son is 3 years old, goes to playgroup, is being assessed for autism AND attending speech therapy (lots of appointments), we have numerous bills to pay, 2 cars to run, I work part time and have to basically balance childcare etc with work and I've never in my life called it 'family admin' as if to make it out to be an actual job as it literally takes 30 seconds to write an appointment in a diary, bills are mostly direct debit so need nothing doing with them and it takes about 5 minutes to renew an insurance policy. Family admin 😂😂😂😂

This would be all the shit dh does and Then phones me to grumble about...

I dunno, everyone is different. Everyone does things differently. If you don't have internet or can't do things online it's a fucking nightmare.

I've just moved house. Into a new build that absolutely nowhere can find online. Things that in theory should take seconds online have taken me hours of phone calls to bloody all and sundry. My favourite was the electric company (who already have a smart meter in the fucking house!) telling me my house doesn't exist.

Well depends on your circumstances and how much of a twat your DH/OH is. For example :

-all school events
-all medical bookings(which can be quite considerable if you have at least one kid with SEND or a chronic condition) for the kids,plus yourself and going to them,plus husband (because he's a twat)
-sorting out childcare around your work commitments and his , going out etc
-sorting out and taking time off for things like big deliveries or people coming in to fix things
-sorting out anything related to the house bills,swapping energy suppliers,making savings,mail etc.
-making sure childminder/nursery,clubs,school lunches etc are paid on time
-since it's the season,all things Christmas presents,cards,food etc

That's just off the top of my head. My friend's husband is a massive twat.

I work 4 days a week and tend to leave that sort of thing to my day off. I find my work quite stressful and find life less stressful in general if I don't try to tackle lots of small admin tasks in between everything else but can let them pile up knowing I've time set aside to sort them all.

Usually takes 2-3 hours to include meal planning (including messaging teens trying to find out when they'll be in), internet shop, dealing with emails from schools (consent forms, paying for things, putting things in the diary, etc), other emails, (messages from friends, my choir, bank statements, etc), dealing with any tradesmen, booking any medical appointments for me or DC, buying the odd household thing or birthday present on Amazon, checking the family diary is up to date with my work diary, etc.

I can't see how you could fill more than half a day a week though if you were at home full time.

@LuckySeventhWave

How many dc do you have
What age are they
What hours do you and dh work ?

Because all of that has an impact.

Remembering birthdays
Posting cards
Making sure everyone's got a poppy for Remembrance Parade
Ordering leotard
Finding a pair of wellies for next weeks field trip
Taking meter readings
Remembering to call Grandma to see how she got in at docs today
Arranging lift share with DD's friend for tomorrow
Planning Christmas gifts for teachers
Filing payslips
Buying purple biros for school
Taking DD to tap lesson

All jobs I've done today after work. On top of the other bits and bobs that help family life run smoothly.

I think it means making sure all the bills are paid, that you are getting good deals on major expenses, that there is a plan in place to feed everyone and ensure they have clean clothes.
My gran's era called it running a household. In my mum's era there ways push towards home economics but that never caught on.

@Fatted I feel your pain! We bought a new build and it was years before we actually 'existed'. Getting anything delivered was a massive pain in the arse, as the sat navs would send everyone to the local asda

Dentist - new app't is made on the same day that we attend the current app't

Bills are direct debit so don't need much in the way of setting up

Forms are filled in as and when required, once every few months at the most and the majority don't take that long to do

Ds's app'ts with the paediatrician are generally sent by the hospital so we just have to ring and say yes, it's convenient or no, it's not and can we make it another day. We don't have many other health care things apart from ringing every few months for a repeat prescription

The car is a lease car so we don't have much to organise with that apart from the tyres (they come to us) and the service and all that takes is a 5 min phone call

I go through the dc's bookbags every day or read the updates on their app. It doesn't take much to send an envelope with money in or sign a note for whatever they want permission for

We don't meal plan much and the shopping list is generally the same every week so that doesn't take much time and it's not a difficult or strenuous job ordering it online

Dh sorts his own stuff out

We share the kids' stuff so it doesn't all fall onto me and childcare is probably the biggest headache, especially since they started school and we have to rely on a childminder