To not understand claims that life admin is 'not a thing'

[LabradorsInThePond]

I keep reading this on MN threads about organisation, time management etc. And that the life admin tasks of renewing insurances and checking mortgage rates can't take up that much time. But I spend a huge amount of time in the throes of life admin. We live a pretty normal, busy family life. I work 4 days in a professional role and can easily spend the 5th day (or at least half of it) in the throes of dreaded life admin.

My list tomorrow extends to twenty three separate items. None of which involve renewing insurances, but they do include buying clothing items (Scout shirt etc.), paying instrument hire, photocopying medical reports for school, booking airport parking, collecting worming tablets, booking a restaurant, buying zoo tickets, arranging a delivery of flowers for mum's birthday, an online grocery shop, buying a thank you gift, arranging a birthday party, booking a roofer, buying new windscreen wipers, emailing the GP, updating kids' Nimbl cards, finding a way to teach DS about dividing decimals, paying various people online etc.

None of these are yearly tasks, and next week there will be another 23 items to complete. It is relentless. DH does most of the house and long-term financial admin and he's also executing his father's too-complicated will, which makes my 23 items look like peanuts.

Do we just have an over-committed life, or does anyone one else find (what others consider non-existent) life admin burdensome and time-consuming? What am I doing wrong here?

But the tasks that women are left doing are real then - ordering stuff, researching best prices and rates, planning holidays, paying bills, etc. All that life admin is real.

The fact that women do all of a family's admin doesn't make it 'just life' either. Are we saying it's just part of life and something we should get on with and stop fussing over because we women are the ones who are doing it? The fact that women do lots of cleaning/ laundry/ cooking doesn't mean it's not real work and a pain in the arse to boot.

It seems to me that some here are saying there is something about women's involvement in a task that instantly renders it void of value, void of real effort, a non-task really, just a long list of small items which are so essential that we have to get them all done, and not just enjoy the TV or the cup of coffee.

I think if a woman really finds herself in a position where she is getting around to necessary tasks when the children are in bed, after she has done her day's paid work and the kitchen is cleared up after dinner, then a good hard look at division of labour should be undertaken. It shouldn't be a point of pride that we find a way to keep up with all the stuff others shrug off.

I was a junior lawyer / trainee in a small law firm at the time, so I was doing the grunt work on various cases that my manager was overseeing. If you can believe it, there were hardly any computers in the office! (Late 90s — the partners didn’t like to spend money on anything they could get juniors to do instead 😂) These days it’s all completely different, of course.

Completely agree with this. The thread has plenty of posters who, rather than just giving their tips for managing life admin, seem to regard it as morally virtuous and an example of their superior nature to pretend that what is actually a substantial amount of work is not work at all. (And I’m assuming that most of all of the posters are women.)

Yet in workplaces similar work is done by admin staff (also largely female). Such work is either largely culturally coded as female work, or in the home it is seen as evidence of being a “better” mother or person. Whereas, in my experience, men don’t tend to pretend it isn’t work.

(And then there’s that stereotype about women being better at multitasking…perhaps men don’t tend to be culturally encouraged to see boiling the kettle as a great opportunity to do some extra work and feel virtuous about their productivity….?)

Yes this. The thought of a partner who can't be bothered/is seemingly incapable of simple tasks is hugely unappealing and can't say I'd stay with them for long. If they lived alone I'm sure they'd funny enough manage to complete stuff they apparently have no time or capability to do.

Exactly.

A lot of these "partners" just sound completely unappealing - isn't it a real turn-off to have a partner who can't even organise their own insurance or go and do a food shop?

The thread has plenty of posters who, rather than just giving their tips for managing life admin, seem to regard it as morally virtuous and an example of their superior nature to pretend that what is actually a substantial amount of work is not work at all

I don't think a lot of it IS work, or it certainly doesn't need to be. Having to queue up at a pharmacy for someone's medication is a chore; having to sort out someone to come and fix a broken gas boiler is a chore. Taking the car for its MOT is a chore (but I imagine many MNers have newer cars that don't need MOTing!)

But planning and booking holidays should not be a chore.

As for "wife work" I am currently reading a book about the "non-promotable" work that women tend to do in the workplace. Not necessarily office wife work like making coffee, though they are mentioned, but the tasks that don't get you promoted. Women tend to do them more often than men, unsurprisingly. I am only about 1/3 way through it though, so no tips yet!

Anyway my biggest tips for avoiding life admin are: pay for everything on direct debit, do as much as you can online and (probably rather unhelpful) don't have kids or pets.

The thread has plenty of posters who, rather than just giving their tips for managing life admin, seem to regard it as morally virtuous and an example of their superior nature to pretend that what is actually a substantial amount of work is not work at all.

I'm one of those people who finds all this so-called "life admin" very easy, and so far I've been told that means I'm boring, I have no life, I must have no friends, and that I don't care about the environment lol. In fact, I just genuinely don't see how people can make it so difficult (disabilities etc aside).

However, if you read the whole thread, lots of posters have given advice, only to be shot down and told that they must be lying about the amount of time it takes them to do various tasks anyway.

Exactly. so far on this thread there’s been

You must have a boring life and not do anything
Your kids must not have no hobbies and be missing out
your kids must ‘languish’ on screens
Your teens must be miserable, not fit and healthy etc.

You must have to cut out friends and family or barely bother with them

and yet it’s the people whose lives are set up in a way that makes it easier and don’t find it a big deal are the ones acting morally superior?

Completely agree with this. The thread has plenty of posters who, rather than just giving their tips for managing life admin, seem to regard it as morally virtuous and an example of their superior nature to pretend that what is actually a substantial amount of work is not work at all. (And I’m assuming that most of all of the posters are women.)

It's an issue if life stuff isn't split when there's more than 1 adult or parent.

But I don't buy into this calling it life admin.

Shit needs doing. Food needs ordering, bills need paying, cleaning needs doing.

My tip is have a whiteboard and write things such as "buy flowers for X" on there and then decide who will do it and when.
If both work equal days then split the jobs equally. If someone does a shorter week/ PT then they can do the majority in their day off.

So much drama is made out of these tasks which wouldn't exist if people just communicated and happily took on tasks that need doing.

Well, quite!

It works nicely to divide tasks though, as long as both are pitching in equal amounts. I rarely wash up, don't garden, don't clear away whatever poo is outside and can't remember when I last took out a binbag. DH wouldn't know the laundry temp we use, I don't know what dishwasher temp we use. I'll do admin on the sofa, but he makes dinner, and we both chat about what we're doing for shopping, research for trips or big purchases. I'm more organised with everything on my online calendar, DD where possible and all admin to be done same day the need arises wherever possible. He's more practical, so he does lots of the practical tasks, it's a fairly even split according to skills and we can then each largely forget that certain tasks even exist.

Or is it that the partners of these women do all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, so it's ok that the women do admin tasks and squeeze them in whenever they can?

Ha ha, in our house it is exactly that as he works slightly less hours than me! I feel like I get the good end of that stick if I'm honest...

It's learned or facilitated though isn't it. There aren't that many men who would genuinely if they lived alone sit in the dark as they couldn't figure out utility bills, never go on holiday or buy and run a car, always miss appointments and live in filth with nothing to wear or eat. Funny enough they would be perfectly capable of doing these things, yes there's the argument they'd have more time without a family, but wouldn't we all.

What I don't understand is that if life admin is so easy and not "a thing" then why do we need our dh's to take on an equal share of it? If it doesn't exist, or can be despatched in minutes while boiling a kettle, other halves shouldn't be required to engage in it should they?

Well like everyone with a car, I expect my DH to sort his road tax, MOT, insurance. I don’t expect him to make a huge performance of having SO many inevitable life admin tasks to do. He just does it like a normal person. It’s not ‘life admin,’ it’s just doing the normal things that need to be done. If DH told me he needed to spend a whole day a week giving his undivided attention to life admin such as buying zoo tickets and picking up a scout shirt I’d think he’d gone a bit loopy.

It definitely is a thing, and I'd vouch that most women take on the lion's share of it.

Same with things like booking a restaurant. Neither DH or I needs to make a huge thing of our ‘life admin.’ We’d just say ‘we’re going to X aren’t we? On Friday. Yeah, will you book it? Okay, I’ll do the airport parking for Sunday. Good.’ It doesn’t require a huge performance of how totally busy we are and how relentless it all is.

I wonder why so many women people facilitate it though - is it learnt from their parents' marriage or something, I wonder?

Because I look at my parents and DH's parents - and in both cases, our dads are very capable and independent and do at least 50% of all household tasks and admin, from cooking to cleaning, to paying bills, to organising appointments.

And when I first met DH, he lived alone and kept a clean house, went to work, paid his bills, organised his own appointments and ran a car without absolutely any input from anyone else, so there's no way I would have accepted any less capability just because we lived together.

What I don't understand is that if life admin is so easy and not "a thing" then why do we need our dh's to take on an equal share of it?

Because they're grown adults and just as capable of doing it as we are.

If it doesn't exist, or can be despatched in minutes while boiling a kettle, other halves shouldn't be required to engage in it should they?

What a bizarre statement. Why on earth shouldn't they do their fair share and be required to engage? 🙄

Reading this thread, I wonder what benefit some posters derive by continually and repeatedly insisting that their lives are oh so stress free and perfectly organised and incredibly smooth running and anyoneone else who finds life management difficult, or sometimes oppressive, is wrong or incompetent in some way? Also that they seem to be almost offended by the fact that other posters hold a different view to them? I can only imagine that it helps to boost their self esteem in some way by putting others down. Very strange.

Have you not read all the responses from the "other side" who have been telling us that we must be boring, lonely people with no lives who neglect our friends and family if we don't struggle with life admin?

Insults have been flung on both sides.

Have you not read all the responses from the "other side" who have been telling us that we must be boring, lonely people with no lives who neglect our friends and family if we don't struggle with life admin?

Insults have been flung on both sides.

I'm glad you acknowledge that insults have been flung on both sides. As I pointed out way back down the thread, those of us who find life admin a hassle have been called "blithering idiots", "incompetent" , "unintelligent" etc.

But carry on goading everyone! I suppose it's more interesting than paying the gas bill!

Who's goading?

I haven't said any of those things, btw. I have had insults flung at me, though.

There’s also another thing, surely there’s one parent that has less of a commute or shorter work hours than others? I’ve always worked in jobs where my lunch break was the only time I had access to a phone and it was the busiest time of day for eg utility companies. Now especially with wfh surely most stuff falls to one part of a couple because they have more flexibility? I’d be seen as the useless wife but dh has more flexibility so organises stuff, plus he’s more capable than me, I otherthink things and am indecisive, it’s not all ‘the useless oh’, I pull my weight in a million other ways

So why did you only mention one side insulting people? That seems quite goady.

some people like to throw insults. That’s not based on their pov of this subject.

Do you imagine the people who find these things hard, need to the self esteem boost by trying to pretend they must be better people, more interesting people and better parents?

Especially the ones who are offended people don’t feel see things the same way they do?

Do you think that’s strange behaviour?