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!

I honestly just don't think dirty dishes, which realistically is a once a day job at least, is comparable to some of the once-every-six-months 3 minute tasks that people add to their Points Scoring lists.

pardon

I don’t give these things much thought as they are comparatively easy to when I first married. A bill would land on the mat, walk into town and pay it. Need insurance walk to insurance broker. Now it’s just pick up phone click.

The only reason these concepts exist is to explain to men that they're treating women like support humans.

Before kids, almost no-one feels them as a real burden. When you become a mother you reach a tipping point where you can't keep up - and it's at that point that you notice that not only is your male partner not doing 50% of the joint stuff, you're doing most of his personal stuff too.

As with so many things, having children is what makes women aware of what feminism really is or should be.

Before that, lots of us feel that sexism isn't really that much of an issue in Western societies any more. LOL.

I think admin takes up loads of time. And I’m not even including day to day stuff like direct debit.

This week:
someone hit our parked car. So I have to email, call their insurance, call garage for appointment, take car to get looked at, book second appointment to get fixed.

spent 45 mins on phone to hospital for Ds specialist being moved from one place to another.

ages on phone to book visa update

Phonecall with fil solicitor re probate/ house sale

had to call then go in person to local council to sign for garden bin size increase. Couldn’t do online.

ds parents evening had pre paperwork - 3 pages! To fill out.

Ordered cat food/ new kitchen bits, self employment taxes, banking - these were all expected but general and online so ok.

I also work, and some of these this had stupid times like only 9am-12 to call also, and had to try several times

But didn't you also use a butt plug, nipple clamps and have an under the stairs cupboard with your ex OP? I mean, if he wants to experiment based upon what you did with your ex...
Also, don't you have a fetish for whacking your partner with a hammer on his toes during foreplay? No pain, no gain right? And isn't enduring pain and suffering the best part of sex, right?
I would say to him, "let me get this right? Are you saying that you would like to hurt me and that you wre turned on by the thought?"

I don't even want to know which thread this was supposed to be on😂

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

In my head, these don't actually feel separate from mopping a floor or unloading the dishwasher; they're just another task on a mental to-do list. Just a thing that has to be done.

But if I was asked to categorise them separately, I'd just label them 'admin'. I don't really get why the 'life' part has to be added - it seems superfluous to me. We don't call cooking 'life cooking'.

I work in a computer based office job, 99% of what you mention is a 30 second job that gets done at work. My DP works in the NHS in a very much not office based role. For her these types of jobs are a nightmare and pile up until she has a long list to do in the evenings (I do as much as I cant but there are some things that I cant do)

I think this is the point that's trying to be made by a lot of the posts commenting about "life admin".

Yes these are just things we all get on with as & when, we know which things need to be done and however often, arrange things in advance, do out lists for writing birthday & Christmas cards & getting gifts, organise the kids lunches & school outings etc.

The annoyance for some posters on MN comes with the fact that as a woman they are expected to do every single one of these things for themselves, the children, and often for their husband as well. Like the poster above, who's DH only ever packed his own holidays stuff & couldn't understand why it took her so long to do hers, the DCs, and general "family" things. Often the woman is expected to remember everyone's birthdays on both sides of the family, buy cards, buy gifts, write & send if necessary. They are the ones expected to arrange doctor's appointments for all, expected to plan meals & do the shopping list, always them buying the clothes & shoes for the DC, dealing with the school etc.

So it isn't so much having to do the things for themselves, it's having to think and act for everyone else in the family including another adult, & the unfairness of it.

For me, it's not that this stuff doesn't exist, it's that I don't see it as a huge task that needs labelling. It's mostly just things I do while I'm doing other things.

Today, for example, I had to pay the dog walker, pay my therapist and book my car into the garage to get a new tyre. I did the first two while drinking my morning coffee and messing about on here, and booked my car in when I drove past the garage after work.

I run my own business too and there are always things to do but they just get done while I'm watching TV, mostly.

I've got a lot of stuff to do. If I was being totally honest, I might replace the phrase with shit to sort out.

I don't label them anything, they're just part of life, stuff needs doing. I don't give it a name

And I also imagine it feels like more of a job/chore if you have to do it all. You see a lot of posters seething with resentment because their partner just doesn't do any of the life admin at all

Sorting out insurance
Remembering to ring them up before auto renewal so they reduce the price
Splitting savings of >£85 between institutions
Moving money to the best interest rate
Sending documents to the accountant and keeping records of things that are tax deductible
Documentation with council re things like postal votes from time to time.

That's just off the top of my head and there's loads more.

I think life admin is a valid and useful catch all term. Although I tend to refer to it by the sexy title of ‘my admin list’
I’m a single parent, work full time, so when emails come in on anything school/house related (which is daily at a minimum) it’s very rarely a good time to deal with them there and then. Everything gets added up to sort on the weekend and it does mount up to quite a lot. Some weeks more than others.

PP here insisting it’s very little I suspect have less experience with sick children or pets, dodgy old cars, dodgy old houses requiring repair, elderly and dependent family, and also possibly more money. Probably also have another adult in the house managing some of that decision making process and work too.

Half the problem is that it is so bitty, though!

For me, things that happen frequently, even if they take up a good chunk of time, don't add much to 'mental load' because I'm aware of them and generally only just did them so there isn't a great deal to change in prep for the next time.

It is the literally hundreds of things that require 10 minutes attention once a year that cause a huge lag of constantly having to scan my life a few weeks ahead to work out if I'm about to be ambushed by any of them, as there will still be negative consequences if I drop any of those balls (possibly big ones, like becoming an illegal driver if I don't pay car tax or getting dropped by the dentist if I miss more than one appointment ever).

Agree and its usually only an issue when a posters partner isn’t sharing the load and the op is being a martyr by not saying she feels it’s not fairly split or she has had a conversation and he’s just a knob - which I would suggest would have manifested itself prior to any life admin.

so today my child is at the orthodontist. She’s been going for three years, I’ve never been, my husband takes her and makes the appointments, I don’t get involved. I don’t feel the need to know when they are or remind him. So when I’m paying lunch money or school trips or whatever I’m not doing it through the lens of annoyance or irritation that I’m having to do it or that he’s a lazy sod . I think that makes an absolute world of difference. I also have honest conversations with him rather than seething.

It's invented by SAHMs, particularly SAHMs of school age children to expand their workload.

Somehow husband and I managed to both work full time without this drama.

I wouldn’t class ‘visiting my parents’ as ‘life admin’. I don’t have PoA for my parents. I’m sorry for your loss.💐I have five siblings, two parents, and various friends I buy presents and cards for, but I wouldn’t class that as ‘life admin’ either. Taking your children to school or the doctor is just parenting, the same way as reading them stories, buying them shoes and helping with homework is! — all school forms are now online and couldn’t be easier. It’s no longer a matter of digging through the bottom of a school bag looking for envelopes. Car service, MOT, gutters, insurance etc are once a year. Going to the dentist/optician are just normal health stuff — other than making time to go there, it doesn’t take any time of effort. Next appointment booked before I leave. Doctor only if I’m unwell.

And DH does half this stuff, anyway.

I’m torn on this. On the one hand, I agree with the posters that say that it all takes 5 minutes on your phone each time. However, and this is personal circumstances dependent, it’s the sheer volume and relentlessness that I think becomes overwhelming. No sooner have you spent your 5 minutes filling in a form about a school trip, than you get an email about the Halloween disco. Now you need to both pay for said disco, put it in the calendar, figure out who is picking them up after school that day (because now they can’t get the school bus home), possibly shift some stuff around in your work calendar, buy them a Halloween costume (can’t get away with using last year’s every year although I do try!), and then remember in the morning for them to take it to school. Then they come home from school saying they need a shoebox and some presents to put into it for Project Christmas Child. You’re not so much of a grinch that you will refuse to do it, and you can add the stuff to your weekly shop (which you do now before you forget), but now you have to find a shoe box. Actually, 2, because you have 2 children. Then your mum rings to ask you why her internet isn’t working, or to ask if you can take her to a hospital appointment next Tuesday, or to tell you she isn’t coping and needs more care visits. Then the toilet breaks and you need a plumber. Or the window cleaner drops by and you have an invoice to pay. And you’re trying to work full time and feed your children, and you, know, have a life, and sometimes it all just feels like a lot! And yes, it’s just admin related to life, but it does need doing, and it’s the thinking about it that becomes overwhelming. And typically, it’s the women who do the thinking about it. Men might do some of the stuff, but they don’t typically do the ‘project management’ so to speak. And that thinking is usually done at the same time as other thinking - like a full time job - so it feels, to coin an Internet meme, like you’ve got 20 different tabs open in your brain at once.

The 'mental load' even applies to things like being entirely responsible for arranging Christmas plans and for making sure his parents had a present.

Then don't do it. Buying Christmas and birthday presents for my husband's relatives is his problem, not mine.

Same way as I don't feel the need to label having a shower and getting dressed as 'work day preparation activity' or meeting my friends as 'social network maintenance'. Because it sounds a bit grandiose and daft.
I think its useful to recognise that stuff needs doing and takes time, especially when one half of a couple does the lions share and the other doesn't seem to recognise it, and the label is useful then I suppose.
But for myself, to call it 'life admin' feels a bit like trying to professionalise something routine and like something people who don't work say to pretend they do.

It's an excuse for misandry and self pity.

Using your two examples - car tax is paid by direct debit so I never have to think about it, and dentist appointments are booked six months in advance after the last one.

I just honestly never think about those things. My bills are all automated.