Life Admin!

[Bellaboo01]

Am i missing something here regarding 'life admin'?

From what i can see, it is what people are saying they are doing to sound like they are so busy and cant work? I have worked for 30 years and managed life admin, kids etc. I'm now thinking that i need to retire and say my job role is 'life admin'!

All our bills, mortgage, kids clubs, schools, holidays etc etc get done whilst my husband and I work full time.

I could understand if it was housework as well but, what 'life admin' needs to be done every day for 7.5 hours per day?

I do almost all of the life admin in my marriage. We have had periods where I have raised it as unfair and devolved tasks to DH…then I realised it just suits our personalities for me to do it. I’m extremely Type A, neurotic and hyper efficient, DH is…not 😂 so I prefer to just do things myself because that way I know they get done and get done to my standard.

I don’t find the life admin particularly onerous usually but I think it depends how you approach it. I’m in the privileged position to not need to chase the cheapest deal rather than let it auto renew with a quick phone call to say I got a better offer and miraculously knock £200 off; we pay a mortgage advisor etc etc. and some of it I would actually say I enjoy!

I am also lucky to have a flexible job with lots of WFH so I can send emails during office hours, make calls and sit on hold while I get other bits done. When I was teaching and trying to phone companies in my 30 minute lunch break that was a lot more difficult so these sorts of things are probably a lot harder if you have a service user facing role.

Having said that I am now on daily phone calls to Wickes arguing with them about paying out on my bathroom warrantee but that’s not the usual way of things!

I'm a lone parent working full time. Some life admin I'm struggling to squeeze in at the moment:
-responding to wraparound childcare bill, which has double counted some sessions
-working out what to do about a damp patch that has appeared in the kitchen
-deciding whether to go ahead with a quote of £800 to fix an (unrelated) leak in the roof,.or arrange another one
-sort out remortgage on house which is up in a couple of months
-tax return, which I have to do because I earn just over the child benefit threshold
-start buying Christmas presents so I don't have a breakdown come early Dec
-working out if I should start paying more into my pension to reduce my tax bill
-book next year's holiday
Then various small tasks like a present for a birthday party this weekend, meter reading

I'm not trying to claim it's a full time job but these aren't 10 minutes jobs either, I don't see the need for the snarky comments on here.

I work full time and keep life admin to a minimum by having everything online etc. just a family of 4 with no house moves or illness or complications. So it is pretty easy.

My mum never worked and spent a lot of time on life admin but that included care admin for 4 family members with complex needs (care home etc), multiple house moves including international and a much more complex situation.

Thank you!

I hate the term play date.

Well, I like the expression - it's more apt than 'paying bills' as it includes organising stuff! I don't know anyone who claims it's a ft job at all, but sometimes it's just another thing to do. You cross one thing off the list and add another on. I have 2 dc 10 and 12 including an ASD child, and DH and I both have elderly parents, so that probably adds to it. 2 cars, 2 cats, largeish house that always needs something doing.

I do try not to complain because I know it's just life, everyone has to do it, and we're lucky to have kids, pets, a home, and parents still alive!

Call it what you like, we all have to do it to some degree. If you have to manage every single aspect of another family members life, over and above the norm, in particular adults with a disability or in care, it does become a job in itself. So I treat it like that, alloting a time to clock on and off as an admin job would be. Giving it a name kind of compartmentalises it, in my mind anyway.

Who says they do it all day? It's a pain but takes a two or three hours a week if that - though when I do my taxes those three hours feel like three weeks...

It's a ridiculous term. People love to pretend to be busy all the time.

I was talking to my mam about this the other day, because someone had said it to her and she didn't know what they meant. She raised 7 kids none of us more than 2 years apart - she said in her day they used to call it "being a fecking adult".

Well I’d agree I’m probably a bit disorganised/ useless but I find life admin stressful.

It’s finding the head space to think about the constant school emails (I’ve had to attend 5 different school meetings in the last 3 weeks for various things which I’ve had to rearrange my working hours for) and requests for various cooking ingredients for school cooking lessons / money for author talks / forms for residential etc

Then there’s cleaning / tidying the house, planning meals, shopping, cooking, helping with kids homework, present buying, vets appointments for elderly cat etc etc etc

I find it overwhelming sometimes on top of my day job

Who is saying they can’t work due to it? I think it’s a helpful phrase to explain all the things that mostly mums end up doing that doesn’t occur to men.

I think it becomes overwhelming when you have children with special needs or health issues.
In the last week I've had a 2hr video call, a 1hr video call, 30 min call from school and still have a couple of forms to complete this morning and a 4pm visit to school (luckily my non working day today). All for DD's SEN. I still work part time see despite having teens as I simply cannot keep on top of it all otherwise.

We both work full time and its not something I even think about. Its just something that's part of life and each thing gets done as and when needed.

All OP has communicated to me is that she lacks the intelligence to understand not everyone is living her life, and has a somewhat tedious need to find any reason, no matter how petty, to feel superior to others.

You don’t have to think about it very long or very hard to realise different life situations and circumstances create different amounts of life admin ( and even those snarking about their term here know what it means, which shows it’s a term that works 🤷‍♀️) and different opportunities ( or lack thereof) to get it done in. As others have outlined well on this thread.

Ps I have never heard anyone say they can’t work due to life admin, so you are clearly making that up.

I dont use the term, but the concept is real whether I use the term or not

Just trying to organise various prescriptions between the GP surgery (we never had the rquest) to the chemist (we put the request in) is a full time job at times

Constantly running out of medication due to this even though I use the portal at the chemist, do all the right things, do it in advance (but not too far in advance or the request gets rejected)

Thats without booking hair cuts, shopping, booking work to be done in the house, resarching things that need to be purchased and trying to view them (sofas, cant find a sofa to view in local stores), hollidays, the list is endless.

As others have said most services are uncontactable at the best of times and if they are contactable its at times when Im at work.

No one does life admin like a full time job, that’s ridiculous. But to wave it away like it’s nothing is also disingenuous.

When my kids were going through school it was quite significant. My DH similarly had his list so stereotypically I covered the kids health, school, trips, extra curricula, family social, shopping, holidays etc. He covered household maintenance, bills, tariff negotiations, annual stuff like insurance, cars MOTs etc.

I was a do a bit a day, he was a save it up to do once a month but it all adds up!

I’m a really organised person but sometimes get overwhelmed at times but that’s just adulting sadly.

This summer we had DD starting school tasks, we are living in a house renovation and had some unexpected issues and trades everywhere, issues with a BTL and DH dealing with probate as well as needing hospital treatment himself. It did all get a bit much, I had lists and decisions coming out of my ears and I dropped some balls. But it’s not permanent and most months it’s all entirely do-able.

It can be hard if only one person in a family has to manage it all though, and if you have complex health needs or dependents.

I find it’s not the tasks that are the issue but the feeling of the mental burden of it all. It can fill your head and not in a good way.

I’m married to a man who likes to get involved in life admin type jobs, we are childfree, I retired very early so I’m effectively a housewife and have spare time, we have no pets, neither of us have disabilities or chronic pain, we don’t have elderly parents who need care or other friends or relatives who need our help and our home doesn’t need any major maintenance or renovation, so our life admin is basically nothing and because my husband is involved mine is half of ‘basically nothing’.

However some people will have LOADS of life admin and very little time to do it in, and some for others it will feel like more because their partner isn’t doing any of it. Add to that a partner who doesn’t do half the ‘life admin’ usually also doesn’t do half the childcare, housework, decorating, diy, parental care, shopping, cooking or anything else and I can see how it would become overwhelming for some people.

I read a thread on here years ago where a woman said she had had enough of her husband, the tipping point was a dentist appointment. Basically she did everything and worked part time, she was booking the kids dentist appointments and her husband asked her to book him in too and she just snapped. It’s easy to say ‘well you’re already on the phone to the dentist, what’s the issue, it’s an extra 30 seconds to book him in’ but usually the issue being complained about is the tip of the iceberg.

I don't understand why people get so irate with the term, it's just an umbrella term for all the stuff you have to do that can be a bit of a pain in the arse, quite probably invisible tasks because women likely disproportionately do them. I agree it doesn't need to be inflated into a full time job, but what's the big deal about giving it a name?

I think it is just another annoying term used by people who can't wait to tell others how busy they are...

These days once you can:

• set up direct debits for utility/council tax bills, mortgage, insurance, internet
• have your food shopping delivered
• do your banking online

So there are many practical ways to cut down on time wasted on all this.

Unless you are also looking after a disabled person/child or doing the admin for an elderly parent, there really is no need to spend hours on so called 'life admin'...

Frankly it is a choice as well to obsess about your children's activities every day and getting them to do more stuff/have a busier diary than the average CEO...

From what i can see, it is what people are saying they are doing to sound like they are so busy and cant work?

No. Absolutely nobody is saying that.

The more time you have, the most time you use for tasks imo.
People unintentionally fill their time and then justify how busy they are. I see it with myself really when I’m on mat leave. I might walk or drive to a different shop to pick something specific up that I “need” for the week or the dinner that night but if I was in work full time I would just do without. Equally when you have more time to spend browsing for things or doing chores it generally takes longer.

I haven't in real life, people on here quite often do though, or cite it as a reason for not working when their children are of school age (which is their choice of course and I doubt anyone truly cares, but often they'll go to lengths to explain why it's because they're so busy and couldn't possibly work).

We just have a shared calendar, whoever sees the thing that needs to be noted writes it on and we go in and highlight what we're doing to do (and talk about it if needed). Most bills we just have direct debits, and stuff like MOT we just do our own. I do agree with PP saying sometimes when you have more time you make more tasks.

No one does life admin like a full time job, that’s ridiculous. But to wave it away like it’s nothing is also disingenuous.

This is what I think too. It's all the little things that are needed to keep a household running. None of it very big, but there's always something.

In many homes, the man goes to work and then comes home. The woman goes to work but also does all the admin crap whether at her desk or in the evenings. It's not just the time it's the headspace and I find life admin is very closely related to the mental load (which I personally find much more challenging).

It's labour and it should be acknowledged as such.