Life admin

[FridayNightSinner]

Fucking life admin. Taken hours today and that’s basically chasing things, apart from speaking to insurance provider on quote renewal to get it reduced, but managed to get it increased instead. Annoyed as whilst on hold to one of the companies, I think I’ve inadvertently thrown out a bill in big recycling bin that isn’t sent online. So, hours spent getting nowhere to be repeated.

I am organised and I find it a pain to constantly keep on top of it all. It’s a by product of having a modern life op with all the stuff we own and activities. Fgs don’t have kids that increases it tenfold. I manage it by working hard and keeping spreadsheets god knows how everyone else does. Anyway I completely agree with you. It’s madness and takes up far too much time.

Set calendar alerts. Or the reminders app in apple phones.

It’s revolutionising my life. Every time I do a job I add an alert at the appropriate time next month/year. I add prescription renewals, tree pruning, car insurance, dog vax, everything.

It’s getting easier.

Individual jobs can still be a pain of course, but it’s so much easier than last year because it’s not last minute.

So many things don’t just seem one and done. It’s the chasing. It’s the carving out of time to deal with something and website is down, can’t speak to anyone if there’s an issue, get sent on a circular mission. It feels like I think something will take five minutes, (e.g. filling out and printing a return form) but will then say to contact customer services for that particular provider, which is a circular job of speaking to a chatbot which just tells you how to make a return and doesn’t say how to return this particular item and on and on it goes, taking the window of time you had to deal with it. It’s then being told someone will get back to you and chasing and it’s being told someone will contact you and chasing again into circular hell to eventually be told you’re too late to return it, which creates more admin.

It’s going to the chemist to deal with an issue who then say you have to make an appointment, but can’t make it in shop as no one there can deal with making appointments, so have to go home and keep hoping someone will answer phone to then be told appointments have to be made through doctor, who says have to call back at certain time for a referral to chemist, so you call back on hold to be told they don’t make referrals to chemist, so call chemist back who say there’s no appointments.

It’s organisation x needing something from you but they need information from organisation a,b and c to fulfil request. It’s trying to get info from organisation a,b and c who need lots of chasing and still ignore. It’s driving me fucking mental.

It’s receiving a letter you’ve been expecting for weeks which tells you to contact them within two weeks of the letter, but arrives 20 days after the letter’s date (on more than one occasion - do they just sit in someone’s intestines for a fortnight?) It’s trying to take some simple steps forward and it taking hours and being fruitless - on repeat.

Dd and I are currently up to our eyes in life admin for her uni year abroad, especially the visa application. It's an absolute bloody nightmare and I'm losing the will! I had no idea it was going to be this bad. f it weren't for sodding Brexit we wouldn't have to be doing it of course

I hear you. My late DH took three hours most weekends to go over everything (he was the type to cross reference receipts etc, partly as he did have to submit expenses for work). Whereas I dread it and only do things when I’m up against it - like yesterday sat up suddenly at 6am realising my parking permit had expired a couple days earlier and I hadn’t renewed it, even though the same thing had happened last year and I’d received three parking tickets before I noticed (I don’t drive my car a lot). Doing my taxes is a nightmare - it isn’t at all in reality, all I do is collate my paperwork, do some sums and submit it all to my accountant. It takes about four hours but when I’m doing it it feels like three weeks.
But changing phone networks or energy suppliers when you move and it takes the whole day.
Hate it.

It’s all the apps for everything too. Want to pop to an activity on the way back/to somewhere? Nah, why not have every drop of spontaneity squeezed out of life instead with strict timings for everything? Faff around for an appropriate slot on an app first so that you can queue up at the same time as everyone else and give all the same details again when you get to activity, after paying on another parking app you try to download and then have to verify with visa.

I then have to come on to mumsnet and do the equivalent of screaming into my pillow about said admin!!!

I do set reminders. Sometimes I even act on them! Yes to the PP on tax returns!

School admin - again, yes! some stuff on school app, some on email, some on google classrooms, some just verbally to the kids (WHY?!?!), some on newsletter, some on website, which means ironically then need more admin from parent class WhatsApp groups in case you’ve missed a communication somewhere - especially loved it when a parent sent a reminder to the class group for their other kid (and then went offline) sparking a frenzy🤣