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!

People have different standards about things. So for example, if you are aiming to save every penny and you therefore shop around at Aldi and Asda and you try to go at particular times of day to get the bargains, that will take you longer than if you just do a weekly online Tesco shop. Or you might only buy stuff that is in season and local and free of packaging because you are concerned about the environment. Again that will be a lot more work than just a weekly Tesco shop.

As you say, these are lifestyle choices. Like the pp who says she doesn't bother doing any of the school admin. That's a legitimate choice and will probably make your life easier.

I didn't have someone there with me from the start ( army partner who didnt even meet with his child till she ws over 4 months) so it was just a normal to me. I was 20 at tgphe time

Then we split up with 2 kids only having lived in same house for under a year, so I just carried on as I had previous 4 years. Easier with him not there tbh.

Hmm... trying to save every penny isn't a lifestyle choice for lots of people.

I’ll happily admit our busy bits of admin are mainly self inflicted, I do however envy the parents who have one app they go to for school interactions. I have 2 kids at 2 different schools that don’t use one app for everything so we need to check parent pay, school grid, gateway, class dojo and google classrooms plus youngest gets stuff set in separate maths/English apps and gets things sent home as physical letters. Unsurprisingly that’s more effort than all being in one place even if the amount of things you need to ultimately respond to is identical.

What's 'life admin' though?

Isn't it all part of life? I sort my bills out when they come up for renewal and everything is on direct debit, so when the renewal letter comes I spend 10/15 minutes on a call haggling for a cheaper deal.

Shopping is just a part of life. So I do a list when I need to go.

I'll occasionally block out time in my work calendar to make a couple of calls otherwise my phone is on speaker next to me whilst I'm working.

Life admin to me is shredding all the bloody letters that I've stuffed in the drawers because they have my details on.

These things take up such a tiny proportion of my time, they are not worth labelling.

You're lucky, then!

OK, and if they took up far, far more of your time would you think them worth labelling then?

I've worked all my life and brought up 3 kids while working ft. With a DH also working ft. However when the youngest had a health crisis and mum got dementia in the same year, my ability to do all the admin around those things, and do a full on full-time job vanished. So I'm a good use case.

Im now what you might call a SAHM, helping DD get through her GCSEs when she is only able to attend achool half the time. And sorting the carers round at mum's place.

It doesn't feel like I'm working productively at all. It feels like my whole life has gone, and has been replaced with only the life admin. Like a hollow pretend life, pleasant but as meaningless as toddlers playing shops.

I'm not making a meal of any of the tasks and I am efficient - because, you know, it's actually not as hard work as prepping for and chairing an investors' meeting while taking calls and managing a business or whatever.

But it does take a decent 35 hour week, sometimes more.

Some of that is by choice - I just said to older DD, call me when you're at the station i will come and get you. If I was at work this afternoon I would not have been able to make that offer, and she would have got the bus with no drama. So care work and life admin does expand to fill the space - but then, every bit of it is actually making life easier for someone, so there is always a rationale for fitting it in rather than sitting around on mumsnet (haha).