If you don't consider life admin to be a thing...

[ruethewhirl]

...then how do you mentally 'label' (so to speak) things like banking and official correspondence?

Not being goady here, genuinely curious. Not a TAAT as such, I see it stated so often on MN that there's 'no such thing' as life admin or the mental load (although I tend to assume the latter refers to slightly different things eg each partner doing their share of things like remembering birthdays, making sure the kids have clean clothes etc). Life admin-wise, part of why I'm bemused by this is that I have a lot of things to take care of in my life that I think definitely count as life admin - not only my own banking, but managing correspondence with my GP's surgery (I have multiple conditions) and also handling my mum's finances at her request (she has Alzheimer's) plus handling her general correspondence and sorting things out on the many occasions her care company drops the ball. 🙄 Oh, and chasing the vet/pet insurance company about insurance claims for our cats that seem to drag on for ever!

And then there are things like handling the correspondence if you switch banks or energy providers, complaining about poor service, managing quotes if you're getting home improvements done... what are these things if not life admin? What do you call them instead?

Is it really so insane to suggest that these types of activities warrant an umbrella term with which to refer to them? Presumably the vast majority of people have at least some of this kind of stuff to do in their day-to-day lives, so it puzzles me when people claim there's no such thing. (And if you're one of them, how do you refer to these tasks?)

YABU: There's no such thing as life admin
YANBU: Yes there is!

It would try the patience of saints.

Of which I am not one!

I'm not a Saint either @Alltheyearround but I could have done a lot of teaching in the time getting that EHCP took.

Thanks people for responding, obviously some varying perspectives (and levels of ire 😄) here. I'm definitely envious of those saying these kinds of jobs don't take up much of their time!

I'm getting the feeling that much of the ire is down to a perception that if someone uses the term 'life admin' they are being a bit up themselves, or playing the martyr/trying to make it sound like they have more on their plate than they really have. I don't really understand that - having a name for something isn't the same as claiming it's a hugely onerous task.

Something else I'm curious about, because a lot of what one could call life admin now would have been termed 'paperwork' back in the day. A question to those who think people who use the term life admin are martyrs/drama queens//trying to imply they're busier than others/making heavy weather out of day-to-day responsibilities - would you make the same judgements of someone if they were calling it paperwork instead?

It's always nice when someone gets it about how hard it can be wading through the things that have to be done for elderly/disabled loved ones! I'm curious though, why would it make you look like a frazzled mother if you listed the things you have to do? That's just making a list, it's emotionally neutral. People seem to invest a whole ton of emotion into the question of whether life admin is a thing, and that baffles me tbh. The things we have to do in life are just a fact. Being aware of them, and the fact that they need to be done and will take up some of our time, is emotionally neutral imo. And what we choose to call them is just terminology, surely?

I think you hit the nail on the head - paperwork sounds a lot less wanky than ‘life paperwork’!

It’s the life bit I think - like ‘life coaches’

That sounds like a lot, but tbh I'm not sure I'd really class things like attending appointments as life admin either, different kettle of fish really (imo). You clearly have a specific (and rather narrow) view of the kind of people who use the term life admin, though, going by your previous post, and all I can say is it doesn't apply to me.

This.

The fact people consider unloading the dishwasher a ‘job’ they have to do, akin to repainting a hallway or taking a child to a dentist appointment, is why people take issue with the label ‘mental load’. To me, unloading the dishwasher is like drawing the curtains at night or brushing my teeth. It isn’t a “job” or “admin” that weighs me down.

I mentally label them a pain in the ass and give them low priority. There's far too much bureaucracy in the modern world. Life's too short. Do the bare minimum on the last minute if it's absolutely necessary.

I don't think people tend to deny life admin is a thing. I think its more that we say it isn't the onerous burden that some make it out to be.

I think maybe some of us are talking about apples and oranges here. A poster upthread asked why she’d name something that takes at most 20 minutes per month and my reaction is WTF?! I’m looking at a minimum of 20 minutes per day for this shit. Often more. Whether that’s due to differences in our lifestyles or sheer inefficiency on my part I have no idea, but it’s not an equal situation.

It’s just an absurdly corporate made up vibe .

You mean stuff our parents just got on with? I call it being a grown up

I do the spreadsheet thing too. Two things it the app won't do that the spreadsheet does:

1. Project forward your budget. It only tells you what is already spent. If you want to plan forward and never run out of money, you need a spreadsheet.
2. Segregates different categories most importantly shared costs with DH and his outgoings that should be shared with me so we can balance up once a month. That avoids any resentment or disagreement with a partner about who pays for what. I

The spreadsheet takes under two minutes a week and is one of the things I do when I log on in the mornings, along with checking emails and itinerary for the day. Not time intensive, just normal adulting.

Even if it is 20 mins a day, that is less than 2% of the total minutes of a day, 2 hours a week. It is not a significant proportion of time. And it is broken into a couple of minutes here, couple minutes there. Not some huge burden.

If you said 2 hours a day, I would agree with you that it was a lot. And it would probably mean you were looking after others, such as elderly parents or kids with additional needs.

Personally, I think we have all become convinced everyone else is having a better time by what we see on social media. Ordinary life is boring and repetitive, not shiny and exciting, but the repeated noise suggesting it is some sort of weighty burden to suffer through is not helpful to anyone and only adds the stress. Where has our resilience gone to? Buried under a pile of 'life admin' in some sort of competition of who is busiest?

But even 20 minutes a day is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I spend longer than that in the bathroom in the morning but don’t feel the need to categorise it.

Let’s be honest, most “admin” can be done on your phone while you sit on your arse and watch Netflix.

With tech you can do these things easily, in your breaks, while watching tv, handsfree phone in car etc etc.

It's possible to give tasks a name and also 'just get on with' them, though?? The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Not always. Some things require concentration, and more than a few minutes to complete.

That's an awful lot of meaning to attach to it, and I certainly didn't suggest anything of the sort. How on earth can the mere act of calling a process by a name signal a lack of resilience or competitive busy-ness?

I find that most of the things you list take very little time. I don't really ever do any "banking". I don't have any loans, i know what i earn and i spend slightly less & a bit goes into a savings account on a direct debit. I've had the same current account since i was 10.

We don't often switch elec or gas billing company and when we do we find it takes minutes to compare rates online & sign up to a new one, same for the internet connection. All my bills just go on direct debit. About once every year or 2 dh and i spend half an hour just checking if stuff has gone up in price.

DD has some medical stuff but there's very little "correspondence" about it.

We only move mortgage fix every 5 years and again it doesn't take long.

I don't use pet insurance as i think its a bit of swizz. We just pay when we get the cats flea treated. I don't have any "general correspondence" on anything.

Are you a slower reader op or an overthinker? I have a friend who seems to spend a lot of time on "life admin" and over time I've realised, she takes much longer than me to read & understand letters or bills, and do the sorts of basic maths to check when a price has gone up etc. She can spend a morning reviewing energy tariffs on a comparison site picking apart which to go with, i will look at them & minutes and make a quick decision to go with one.

I think sometimes you spend as long on a job as you have time available

The main issue is not whether any of these things individually are a big deal. Most women who are overwhelmed by 'life admin' or other small tasks are overwhelmed because they are responsible for everything. If you have to think of and either do or delegate every 5-minute admin task, every dishwasher, every bit of tidying, even drawing the curtains - that becomes a huge amount of stuff that you are responsible for on top of your paid work even when there may be several other people in the house who could actually be responsible for those tasks.

My sister's DP will just go off to work in the morning leaving all the curtains drawn, even if he was the first one up. The reason that's a problem is not because it's a big deal to open the curtains, it's because that is one of 500 small tasks that are entirely her responsibility. It was never discussed or negotiated, he just doesn't do it and that shows a lack of respect.

“Life Admin” IMO, is all the little jobs that can be done by anyone in the family, but normally gets left to one person…. In my house we have reached a balance now
E.g.

1. Family of three adults, one working full-time (A), two not working (B & C)
2. A. does meal planning, shopping, cooking, clearing up (like filing paperwork, sorting out cupboards Etc.) as well as walking the dog in the evenings
3. B. does the general washing, garden and house maintenance, helps with shopping, cooking breakfast, clearing up after all cooking and walking the dog in the day
4. C. does own washing and supports B when required, also gets everything ready for the cleaner and will sort out areas of the house that are being repurposed. Also helps out by doing shopping for stuff that isn’t covered by the main Supermarket shop and does all the painting and decorating, which B. supports them with

Everyone mucks in with in-between-cleaner-days cleaning. It has taken a while, but I think it’s about right now!

That sounds horrendously unbalanced to me - poor A!

Exactly - it would never occur to me that I needed to sit down and specifically devote a chunk of time to any of the stuff people list on here, I just do it naturally as part of everyday life.

Most of it gets done in front of the TV in the evenings or while I’m having a coffee, or even on the toilet while waiting for the washing machine to finish.

Are you a slower reader op or an overthinker?

No, neither of those things, but it's a fair question. It's definitely not a case of tasks expanding to fill the time available; I work full-time and have no interest in fannying about letting tasks take longer than they need to. Tbh though, one conclusion I'm coming to reading some of the replies is that I genuinely do have more on my plate at the moment than perhaps a lot of people do, largely because of being my mum's carer. That's not a 'poor me' or a busy boast or anything like that, just a statement of fact. My mum's got Alzheimers and is going through a phase of her care requirements changing a lot, and this is leading to a lot of liaising with the care company being needed. Added to that, recently, having to liaise again with GP's surgery, pharmacy and care company because they keep making mistakes 🙄I'm bearing with it for now because I don't want my mum to have to get used to a new set of carers, but it's pretty time-consuming atm as I'm having to double-check everything they're doing to ensure no new stuff-ups have entered the mix.

Obviously a lot of that is one-off stuff, but still qualifies as life admin in my book, albeit it's for my mum's life and not mine, and even when things are in less of a state of flux there are things that need doing regularly.

Re banking, all I mean by that is things like moving money into savings, setting up things like direct debits when needed, money sometimes needs moving between my mum and myself (or vice versa) for things like settling up after a grocery order. Again I'm not particularly claiming it takes ages, just that it's a thing and it needs doing. There does tend to be medical correspondence to sort for both my mum and myself as we both have multiple conditions unfortunately.

Tbh though, even if my life was more straightforward I would probably still regard some tasks as life admin, simply because it's a name for admin that needs to be done as part of life. The term doesn't have any emotion attached to it for me.