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?

Sounds normal to me, most of these things take a few minutes each. Maybe do a few at a time if you find doing them all together too much. You could do some on your lunch break, during a commute if you're not driving, early in the morning before you get out of bed and at night when you sit down you could do a few before you relax. It's just whatever works best for you, everyone has to do these things but i never call it life admin or give it a second thought. It's just all part of adult life.

Let us assume a couple with children, a house and a garden. They give their kids opportunities and keep the garden tidy and the house clean.

I genuinely don't understand how they can have any significant down-time and keep on top of "life admin" unless one of them is a stay at home parent or maybe only works 1-2 days per week.

My main problem is clearly that I have a boiling water tap. These thing would obviously magically get done with no effort if I had a kettle. 🤣

This made me laugh 😆

While it’s true that many of these “life admin” tasks can be accomplished quickly it is the sheer volume of them and relentless nature of them that can overwhelm.
Also, carrying around in your head a never ending “to do list” is mentally wearing but part of every day life.
I suspect that the real reason these tasks are often minimised and dismissed as trivial is because in most families, regardless of career and childcare commitments, these tasks, and the responsibility to remember and keep on top of them, falls to women.

If you're really posh, get your butler to do it.

I could. I'm sure OP could

I am a single parent to 3 DC, I have a full-time busy job, and my kids do loads & loads of sports. It's the last one that makes it hard.

Trying to keep on top of their assorted training, matches, which sport, child & location, exhausts me, just on its own. I put them all in my calendar but the arrangements often change or aren't fully confirmed till close to the time.

I fully get where OP is coming from

For me, I am better trying to do a few a day when I have a break, if I had a day off they'd definitely accumulate & I'd procrastinate.

The posters who say, 'oh do it while watching TV', I feel like giving a hollow laugh. I don't ever sit & watch TV, tho I'd like to. I'm rarely finished with kids' activities before 9. Quick set up for next day & crash into bed, to get up at 520 to exercise.

And the 'being on MN thing'? I'm on my lunch break at the moment. I often don't have one but am trying to make myself. I'm not feeling well today & had a busy morning. Scrolling & reading MN is a mental diversion from the To Do list.

@GCRich - another thing I’ve found is that I can fit more in, admin-wise, when working from home. I spoke to my SIL about this and she pointed out that by doing this, I’m fitting more into a day than I would normally - as in, completing more tasks than I would have done when in the office as some simply wouldn’t have been possible. Do output is higher but in knackered as a result. Maybe the answer is just to do less and live in a hovel!

Laughing at this - Oliver has thrown out all his approaches to time management in his new book: g.co/kgs/uk9gyX

(Which incidentally is a lovely read, but dispenses with his tips & advice from all the years via his Guardian column which I followed slavishly!)

It undeniably takes time whether that time is whilst you're making coffee or sitting at a desk. I don't think OP found the location of where you do the admin that important.
There are some tasks that will be more difficult for some people too whether because of personalities or emotional connections.
The PPs laughing at family photos is a perfect example. If you're trying to co-ordinate a time to take photos with a big family then it's a pain. Ditto if you all want to have some vague dress code. If you're actually organising photos that have already been taken then I know I inherited two large storage boxes of photos when my parents died. The photos span over 100 years and there are over a thousand. It's a massive task to organise them.

Oh god - when I posted I forgot to say that it also assumes that the working parent works from home or has an office job which means that certain life admin tasks can be done during working hours... I have no concept of how teachers or others with demanding jobs incompatible with flexibility do it full stop.

I think you’re over-complicating it, OP.

Just reflecting on my morning and it was-

0830: Cleaner sent invoice so I transferred her payment.
0900 - 0955: Work meeting
0955: Rang consultant to reschedule an appointment; emailed GP surgery for a repeat prescription which they’ll email to the chemist.

1000 - 1130: Work meeting during which I answered the door twice to take in parcels.
1200 - 12.30 while in taxi to a work meeting: Arranged a furniture delivery, ordered a gift for my friend and her new baby, ordered a birthday gift and card for my sister.
1230 - 1330: Work meeting
Now: Having lunch and doing some online banking, getting pet insurance quotes, browsing cheese online to order for a dinner next weekend, adding a few bits to my online grocery basket.

I definitely find that some element of working remotely helps as I’m often gone to take in parcels. I also do practically everything online. I also do zero wife-work: DH looks after any arrangements relating to his family, and I do mine. He does everything associated with car tax/insurance/services and stuff relating to utilities. I look after joint banking, home/pet/personal insurance, and house stuff like cleaner, gardener, furniture companies etc.

My last work meeting tonight is scheduled to end at 7pm so I have no qualms about grabbing twenty minutes where I can during the day to get some jobs done.

This is a really good point. So many replies have suggested ways to be more efficient, but this takes away those spare moments where your mind can wander. I feel like I have to cram something into every part of the day, make myself as efficient as possible, then feel utterly worn out and resentful that I have no ‘me time’.

While technology has helped in lots of ways, I think in increases the demand on your time, like the way people expect instant responses to messages - I’ve seen posts on here complaining because people aren’t replying to their messages instantly.

Even now, I’ve been writing this when I should be printing out booking emails for an upcoming holiday, or calling with a query about the holiday, or checking/ going several other things. All this is on my lunch break!

If you think it’s hard work nowadays, OP, imagine what it was like for me as a widowed single parent hospital doctor in the days before the internet!
Every utility bill meant writing a cheque and walking to the post office, holidays couldn’t be researched and booked online, but involved leafing through piles of brochures and driving to a travel agent, no supermarkets delivered, so I had a 20 mile round trip every week to my nearest one, I didn’t even have a microwave and cooked all the DC’s meals from scratch when I got in from work, before tackling all the gardening and DIY (I couldn’t afford tradesmen, my salary went on childcare).

I did all that on my own from when the DC were babies, 30 years ago. Yes, it was bloody exhausting, but one just had to get on with it!

You sound like my MIL who calls these things working! A lot of the things on your 'life admin' list are surely just life and living? - helping your kids with homework, buying gifts, booking holidays, looking after pets, shopping for food....

Do you want to have nothing to do? Sounds like you need a PA so you can just go out to lunch (get them to book the restaurant though... such a chore)

Sorry I agree with this.

I’m not unsympathetic as I remember finding this sort of thing overwhelming when my kids were smaller but now I do it all as well as my full time job.

I do think things are much easier now though as in our house everything is purchased online. I order multiple sizes and anything that doesn’t fit is returned on a Sat am while the kids are at their sports. I don’t shop around for cheaper insurances etc as I don’t have the time, I simply let it renew (this will likely change once teenage ds passes his test).

Subscriptions for pets (and everything else. I have them set up on Amazon for dd’s san pro, my favourite coffee, shaving heads for dh and ds, literally as much as possible) are also a real boon and make life so much easier.

Housework and food shopping are my only real gripes (good cleaners are hard to come by and online shopping didn’t work for us). The day to stuff is annoying but gets done. I have to say, I wouldn’t leave it all to do at once though, I would do a couple of things each evening instead.

Moving house and everything that comes with that in the following month
Booking a holiday (your example of the airport)

That is all I have to do as a single person who rents. If single people complain of life admin it's often actually housework/housekeeping (like your example food shopping) or occasional things like moving and holidays and the occasional birthday.
If I want to go to a restaurant I just turn up and hope for the best unless we're a big group.

I agree. It takes ages. Life Admin is definitely a thing.

Doing all these necessary things for your family is definitely life admin (to the poster who says paying bills online and buying clothes and presents is not life admin.)

With all the online stuff that you can pay/ buy/ order it’s easier to just do it whilst on the loo, boiling a kettle, in the evening before bed or any other mini spare minutes you get.
There is a lot to remember though. I think life admin is a thing and following up all insurances, birthdays etc. is time consuming.

0955: Rang consultant to reschedule an appointment; emailed GP surgery for a repeat prescription which they’ll email to the chemist.

Even this alone has me going 🤔

If you're meeting finished exactly at 9:55 & the next one started exactly at 10, you had 5 minutes to make a call & send an email, without any shift from one task or meeting to another.

Regarding the call, lucky you that it was answered immediately & the discussion was possible in a mere minute or two

I know this can happen but my experience is that most tasks take metal energy & effort & more time than you expect.

Well yes. I find all his stuff fascinating and love watching him evolve and contradict himself as his priorities clearly change 😄

That's true Orwell

The major difference is the “do it throughout the day” part.

if you can’t do that then it mounts up and then it becomes a much bigger task.

People who can take two minutes here and there don’t end up with massive lists that take half a day to sort.

Thats the biggest thing. Especially if it then gives people their day off to actually be off.

I had this debate with someone recently who was having a pop at me for not being free on a weekend day to do stuff. We have to do the laundry/housework etc on a weekend, as well as for in kids activities as they can’t get done during the week atm. She genuinely just didn’t get that it’s not actually possible to bits and pieces here and there.

(and someone snide will say they can be done rather than being on MN, but my laundry/housework isn’t in the hospital waiting room and I’m also not prepared to pay bills, email the school etc while there are people sat right next to me happily reading what I’m typing)

Quite a lot of life admin could be done while you're watching TV / chatting to family in the evening? Unless a lot of it involved being out and about, it's completing a tax return or writing a letter of complaint, I don't think I'd put aside an entire morning to do it.

But do agree that it all adds at, often in 'clusters' at at time when you have lots of other stuff on too.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but for everyone claiming that life admin tasks take a couple of minutes each... well yeah, the actual execution does, but most of them require a lot of thinking or preparation beforehand.

For example, the person who said online shops take a couple of minutes... It might take a couple of minutes to click on everything and click "pay now", but before doing that you need to go through your cupboards (actually or mentally) to work out what you're short on, then plan what meals you're having next week, possibly consult with other members of the household, turning it into a bigger task. Or booking a roofer... yes, picking up the phone only takes 20 seconds, but finding a few roofers, booking quotes, discussing and comparing quotes with your OH, possibly weighing up potential pitfalls can make it take much longer.

But I think the key issue (having worked at a few different types of jobs over the years) is how much your job allows you time to think.

If you've got quite a chilled out job, or a manual job that's quite "mindless", your brain is free to sit and mentally plan what you're having for tea next week so that when it comes to lunchtime you can just grab your phone and knock out an order in 5 minutes. But if your job is very stressful or full-on and you never have time to pause, then not only do you not have time to sit and think things through, but when your lunch hour or the evening comes around, you're so knackered that you haven't got any energy left to think about it all.

I agree with you and people saying it only takes a few mins. But so does the washing or the tidying or writing a work email. They 'just' take a few mins each but it's all of it added up and having to keep it in our brains and remembering. And also the hassle that it won't be straightforward,that you have to research and be put on hold etc.

Booking a flight to spain took me almost 2 days last year. Just for me. Because I had to coordinate the parking, dogcare, covid tests to be sent out and finding out in Spain also.

I've just spent hours researching a phone contract but my research will save me nearly £500. That's a lot of money.