To ask about Life Admin

[sweeneytoddsrazor]

What do you class as life admin. It isn't a phrase I was familiar with before seeing it on here. And given how often people cite it as one of their chores I wonder how long people spend on it. It never really occurred to me to put things like renew insurance in the same category as say cooking dinner so never really thought about it as a chores. I am now pondering who does what between me and D H with regard to it and I don't even really know what it should include.

@sammylady37 I would say that's SAHW now rather than SAHM. And yes i know someone who keeps talking about how busy they are and when you ask them about it it's just "oh you know the house stuff". They have no kids. Just the two of them...

I don't have kids so I do think Mt life admin is considerably less tha a parent. As I don't have to do things like : organise childcare, pay for childcare, organise child's socialising eh birthdays and play dates, but children friend birthday gifts, organise extra curricular activities, pay for those activities, organise health and dental care for children, deal with anything related to school or nursery eg trios, parents evening plays, Christmas parties etc.

This is just off the top of my head as I'm not actually a parent. I'm sure there's plenty more. For me me it's stuff like various insurance and that being renewed. Paying bills. Booking travel. Organising work on the house. Organising health appointments. Probably stuff like making decisions on big purchases too.

I'm not sure if think ofela planning and shopping, cleaning or cooking as admin. Probably more a maintenance task or care task.

I call it life admin. In my life there's been times where it's been fairly minimal and times it's been very full on. Either way I struggle with it. It's ok when things run smoothly, but when they don't it really can take a lot of time and energy to resolve. Add in health, mental health issues, neuro-diversity, economic issues like benefits/council housing/homelessness/debts etc., family court/divorce/ wills and inheritance other legal issues, other housing issues/ house builds/ issues with your home, caring for others, and it can really take a lot of your life up. If you're lucky these things come in a slow manageable trickle over your life, but for a lot of people they get whammied with a whole load of life admin at certain peak times in their lives. New baby, new house, a maternity law suit and a death in the family within weeks, for example. Or a redundancy leading to debts, housing issues, trying to find new job and the boiler breaks down etc. These things tend to come together IME! And the mental load/stress is much greater than handling the cleaning.

@FudgeSundae

People who are like “this is just normal daily tasks!” - yes. That’s the point. It’s just a useful collective name for these normal daily tasks. It’s not a big deal. You don’t have to use the term if you don’t like it

Yeah I agree. It's just normal daily stuff, having a name for it is useful. Especially when talking about why we're so busy or inequalities in partnerships with who does what.

My list currently

• buy and post Birthday card
• need to order two new school t-shirts.
• check and compare train fare to London.
• speak to school re: a secondary visit.
• DS dental appointment needs reschedule.
• Speak to Head office at work re: not being paid this month
• change pet insurers ( been on my list 4 months)
• find the paperwork out from my house contents insurance to work out if I'm covered for something.
• chase up test results from a hospital appointment that should have arrived by now.

My life admin takes about an hour a day. I am able to understand that for other families it's more, and for others it's less. I am never able to understand how some people think that as they have none, that must be true for the entire rest of the world.
Most of 'mine' is for the dc and their extra curricular activities which takes loads of organising.
I always find it a really strange boast on here, when people proudly say they have none. That, to me, means you don't do anything at all ever; if you have nothing to organise.

I don't have much "life admin" compared to my friend who has a son with severe disabilities, so managing his hospital trips and medication and looks after her husband's business accounts so quite a bit.
For us life admin includes: finances (bank reconciliation and budgeting) quotes for annual insurances. Managing the calendar, DH is shiftwork and booking appointments are not straight forward. Menu planning and stock taking. The other bits like checking dates on passports and driving licences to make sure they are updated in time.

I’ve only ever seen the phrase used on here and some may it sound like a full time job

@sammylady37 point taken. it's a bit odd to see it as a full time job if you have nothing else to do, no kids at home, you are NT, retired etc etc. I guess I don't assume when people talk about it they are starting from there, I think they are more likely to be coming from the busier end of the spectrum. When you're getting kids up & out and zoom calls starting at 9 and go on constantly til 6, or you're standing doing surgery or representing a client in court or something, I imagine you do have to schedule booking the MOT. For example I have to think about what day I can wash my hair, in advance, so it doesn't clash with getting up early to finish something for work. I have to hit a far higher level of logistical capability now than I ever needed in my 20s.

Now mine are teens a lot of it is much easier. I used to have a spreadsheet to manage 12 weeks of summer childcare and camps for my 3 kids.

One year the summer nanny I’d booked bailed on us with a week’s notice and I had to find 6 weeks of childcare very suddenly. DH had zero idea how stressful that was - he was 1,000 miles away not bothering to worry about it at all because his work was just ‘so important’.