View Full Version : Life admin
Gardenarian
5-18-15, 10:53pm
Life admin - are you familiar with this concept?
I was reading an article (http://www.lifeedited.com/londons-the-collective/) about dormitory-style housing in London, and they mentioned that one of the great features is that "The Collective offers living as a service. We don’t have time to, nor want to, worry about life admin. So paying one monthly bill which includes everything from room cleaning and linen change, to concierge services and all utility bills and council tax, makes life a lot easier, giving people time to focus on more important things."
I thought it was an interesting turn of phrase. All the crap we do day-to-day: life admin. It would be nice to have all that stuff taken care of for me! On the other hand, there is something infantilizing about it.
It costs around $2-3000 per month to live in what is essentially a small studio apartment at The Collective (Life admin included.)
It's in the Urban Dictionary, too:
Life Admin
Refers to one's personal day-to-day chores that are of an administrative nature. This includes tasks such as personal banking, making appointments, paying your bills, responding to personal emails.
"Sorry I can't today, I have too much life admin to take care of."
"UK’s The Collective Offers Whole System Design Living" (http://www.lifeedited.com/londons-the-collective/)
Gardenarian
5-18-15, 10:59pm
An interesting article on the concept: "'Life admin' tasks like paying bills making many lose sleep." (http://www.theinformationdaily.com/2013/06/26/life-admin-tasks-like-paying-bills-making-many-lose-sleep)
One of my goals in simple living is to rid myself of just these kinds of stresses. But sometimes the pressure to live more simply (like the article mentions, getting to that decluttering) can create more stress. I, too, feel the pressure of the TO DO list.
Wow, those are very interesting concepts! I lived in a YWCA for awhile before DH and I married (in the mid '60s) and it was more like a dorm room with the bathroom down the hall. (At least I don't remember that we had a bathroom for the two of us, but it was so long ago I really don't remember :|(.) The cost was so low I'm sure there was no bathroom. But a microwave sure would have been nice!
iris lilies
5-18-15, 11:59pm
Yep, I can see the attraction of dorms and senior homes if one really wants to live a life of the mind.
that seems very cheap for London, although is that in £?
i still remember the ease of life as a graduate student in a single room. Thet washed bedding, they cooked, and I dismlt have a car on campus to mess with. It was simple living.
my friend's father stayed in a place for seniors that was two rooms, meals,mouse keeping all,provided. That cost $33,000 annually,seems like a good deal.one doesn't have to be elderly and/or infirm, probably one just has to be 55 years old.
This is very Socialistic. Some people have a need to feel very secure & be taken care of. Others would find it very confining. Just depends on the person.
Gardenarian
5-19-15, 12:13am
Iris - that's in dollars. If you go to their website (https://www.thecollective.co.uk/living/rooms) you can see they have rooms ranging from 210-400+ pounds per week. I thought it was quite expensive for a studio, even by San Francisco standards. But it does come furnished and includes cleaning, wifi, TV.
Packy - Socialist? I think of it as more communal.
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 12:29am
Well unless they are doing my dishes ... Really though paying bills is a pretty, almost ridiculously, easy part of life admin. Yea if they'll do my dishes, cook for me from recipes I hand them, apply to jobs for me, do my taxes, and write or call my congressperson for me whenever I say, and find activities for me to do on the weekend, and manage all investment tasks, and schedule a haircut - then we're talking. And yes I've definitely put off doctor and dentist appointments, no time - especially as it involves taking a vacation day of course (luckily I can see the dentist on weekends). I wouldn't have time to switch utilities either, thank heavens there is no choice (the only one I'd even *want* a choice in is to switch off AT&T for landlines). Yes it often, probably most of the time, feels like all I can do is survive day to day.
My current apartment bundles all utilities into our rent which I have automatically deducted from our account monthly. I had nothing to do on move in with utilities except signing the lease. I love it this way.
Iris - that's in dollars. If you go to their website (https://www.thecollective.co.uk/living/rooms) you can see they have rooms ranging from 210-400+ pounds per week. I thought it was quite expensive for a studio, even by San Francisco standards. But it does come furnished and includes cleaning, wifi, TV.
Packy - Socialist? I think of it as more communal. Communal, is pretty much a euphemism or a corollary for Socialism. If you'll look up "communal" and you'll see "socialism"(or a variant) included in the definition. But, you already knew that.
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 3:50am
Life administration: I was really picking on myself everyday for something I knew I was supposed to do *always* slipping. It's not that I'm that forgetful, maybe a little, but no early onset Alzheimers here :). And what was slipping was chores, not turn off the gas ... although I did lock my keys in my car several times a sure sign of being under stress!!! But yea some chores I should do would slip every day. I am kind of lazy and that was part of it. I would pick on myself for something that would slip and something I should do and so on.
I eventually just reached a point of @#$# it, and just accepting, things would slip every day. There would be days I wouldn't make my salad ahead of time and would pick one up at TJs, it would happen. There would be days after taking some utensils home when they were filthy, I would forget to bring them back, and have to use the plastic disposable ones, oh well. A utility bill might even be late occasionally. I might have to re-wear a pair of pants because I didn't do laundry. Never mind actual goals I was hoping to work on that were the easiest things in the world to slip (I don't deny some procrastination). Etc.. Things would slip every day, in fact it was almost like a mantra "things slip every day". It took a long long time to accept that as I really DID used to be capable of handling it all much better when I worked less (it really is insane how much we work in this society). But society @#$# up or not ..... that was my then not now.
if this model of living is socialist simply because the tenants pay to have some life admin done for them - well that doesn't make sense. Lots of wealthy capitalists pay to have their butler do their life admin. These tenants are simply sharing a butler, so to speak.
Fascinating idea. In my ideal world I'd be so busy doing good and useful things that I wouldn't mind having someone else take care of my life admin.
As it is there's a reason I'm renting, and renting with a roommate as well, so there's always someone else in charge of the house, and I can come and go as I please. I do prefer to live a life in my mind as much as possible.
Hmmm......maybe we're too busy doing other things, and not taking care of our own stuff? Maybe our lives are too complicated? Maybe we live in a society where we have too much and feel overwhelmed at taking care of our own stuff/houses/food?
Maybe we have too many "things I really WANT to do" and have the resources to farm out the things we don't want to do?
Just thinking out loud here.
I, too, am overwhelmed with some things.........like fixing meals from scratch every night, hand-washing dishes, looking through dirty windows all the time, needing to weed constantly, needing to clean up the house constantly, etc., etc., etc.
To me, this says that I need to adjust my life to not feel overwhelmed by these things and cut a few things out, or accept that some things might have to be not-perfect anymore. I honestly can't even imagine living in a dorm or in a room, where all these other things are done for me. Even though it initially sounded like a reasonable life-style, it makes me wonder if it's a sign of a problem that we're not dealing with.........like being involved in too many things.......owning too many things..........trying to keep up with a totally consumeristic and materialistic society...........OR......we have become so rich and/or lazy that we want certain things but don't want to work for them.
What would one be doing, once all of these things are being done for them..............working hard to pay for it all? I'm just trying to imagine the total lifestyle.
Basically this is assisted living for younger people. I would throw in a cafeteria like setting and call it good.
You also must have Socialist Communal Pizza served, every day. Everyone will be having the same kind of Pizza, and be eating the same amount of pizza, no more no less, based on a formula that takes into account their weight and height and their caloric requirements & so on. The Socialist Commune will also make achieving Absolute Equality the number one objective; not much else will matter. Everyone will be equal, but as always, some people will be more equal than others. Everyone will be entitled to Ikea Furniture, and everyone will wear the official uniform, and have their head shaved. That said, even though everyone within our group will closely conform to our established norm, our group will be VERY different and BETTER than any other group. See how that works? How do you like that? Thankk Mee.
gimmethesimplelife
5-19-15, 9:51am
One of the reasons I have kept on owning the house I do with my cousin is that it's not typical for someone in my station in life to be a homeowner. There is some ego there along with some of the freedoms you buy from being a homeowner. But there is also a lot of worry and a lot of work involved. Luckily we can get discount and very much cut rate work done on the house due to my cultivating good relations with all the neighbors - often Hispanics that like you can find you good rates on all kinds of repairs. This has bailed us out more than once. But my point here - this kind of living mentioned in the OP really appeals to me in the sense that it can buy you time. Time to do all kinds of quality of life things such as in my case reading more of the classics - on my bucket list is Tale of Two Cities and I haven't gotten close to finding time to read it yet. I just remember my time in the dorms in college and how having so much provided for me bought me so much time - even working and going to school somehow since so many of the small tasks were included in that life there was more time. I do miss that though like anything else there are tradeoffs involved. Rob
I came back to add that something this topic reminds me of in a way is that one of the perks for some people of living somewhere like Costa Rica or one of the other lower cost retirement countries is that one can hire others to do their basic stuff quite inexpensively - and can pay them above the going rate to be fair trade and still get their stuff done quite inexpensively. On the one hand, I have some issues with this, on the other, it does provide work for people in low wage countries. And something else I have noticed - in foreign soap operas - like telenovelas from Mexico and this one soap opera I am watching from Portugal (considered a developed country although for the EU wages are low and the forced austerity from the bailout Portugal received has made life more difficult for many) has all these well to do characters - and even some less than well to do - and they all have hired people doing their stuff, too.
I guess my point here is the ethics involved in hiring others to do your grunge work vs. living a simple life vs. how having others do your grunge work can indeed make your life simpler in some ways. Rob
Tired of your grown up life?
Toss the boring work and strife.
Just send your pay
Then you can play,
If Mum has quit just buy a wife!
>:(
Maybe it's sour grapes, but I'm not in favor of people who are capable young adults paying others to take care of basic life tasks, that's part of learning how to be responsible for yourself and learning limits on self entitlement. Wiping your own behind is part of moving beyond infantile dependence.
gimmethesimplelife
5-19-15, 10:48am
Tired of your grown up life?
Toss the boring stress and strife.
Just send your pay
Then you can play,
If Mum has quit just buy a wife!
>:(
Maybe it's sour grapes, but I'm not in favor of people who are capable adults paying others to take care of basic life tasks, that's part of learning how to be responsible for yourself and learning limits on self entitlement.Kib, I don't disagree with you at all.....as I said, I have some issues with paying others to do my basic life tasks. I'm just of the opinion that there is more than one way to look at this. Certainly in my US life I'm not paying anyone to do my life tasks.....and I'm not sure if I lived elsewhere I'd be OK with this even if it costs much less than in the US. Rob
Hi Rob, my post wasn't directed to you specifically, just a comment on the whole idea. We all pay others, all the time; our society depends on specialization. You're not expected to grow your own lettuce or build your own house, so in that way you're paying someone else to provide for your needs. But from a personal standpoint I think taking responsibility for the little things is the first step toward being a responsible person, period.
In a much bigger sense, specialization is how we roll, but I think that has led us to a sense of detachment that's a real problem and is a big part of human overshoot. I know it's not a popular idea, but I think human kind has evolved beyond sustainability in part because of specialization that has allowed us to innovate in a way that's not holistic ... our innovation doesn't come with the rest of the human or natural world's functioning in mind because we never have to think about those processes. Life Admin is extending that to say you don't even have to be aware of the process by which your own needs get met, and I can't see that as a good idea.
or ... Maybe some of us work really hard at our careers and want to hire other people to do some of the life admin. The way I see it, it's a trade off. I can have less career and less income but do most things myself. Or I can work a little more at a demanding but high paying job, and then not do everything myself, and use my days off to relax. Either model works. The problem is trying to do both.
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 11:12am
Maybe it's sour grapes, but I'm not in favor of people who are capable young adults paying others to take care of basic life tasks, that's part of learning how to be responsible for yourself and learning limits on self entitlement. Wiping your own behind is part of moving beyond infantile dependence.
where does one draw the line? If one hires an accountant to do their taxes is that infantile dependence? Although I usually do my own taxes probably why I complain about doing them, tax professionals aren't really exploited particularly as far as I know (maybe the cheap H&R block ones?). What if you have easy enough taxes and you still hire them? And it will SAVE you HOURS come tax time, it always takes several hours using a computer program. Yea paying someone some low pay to clean my toilet would be pretty bad. I guess the line is how the employee is treated, how degrading the task is. (and it's not like my job is usually mentally challenging, so I don't have high standards here). As for buying a wife, yes spouses splitting task might make it easier than being single where if one doesn't do a task nobody does (cooking in return for them doing dishes sounds like a deal - of course I don't have a dishwasher, maybe I would complain less about them if I did).
Maybe our lives are too complicated? Maybe we live in a society where we have too much and feel overwhelmed at taking care of our own stuff/houses/food?
Our lives ARE too complicated. Well I sometimes buy too much food I then feel obligated to cook, but I'm getting better at that ... Other than that I take care of my car, yea stuff slips, the maintenance may be less than ever 6 months etc..
Maybe we have too many "things I really WANT to do" and have the resources to farm out the things we don't want to do?
maintain a minimal social life? Even that is often near impossible.
I, too, am overwhelmed with some things.........like fixing meals from scratch every night, hand-washing dishes, looking through dirty windows all the time, needing to weed constantly, needing to clean up the house constantly, etc., etc., etc.
To me, this says that I need to adjust my life to not feel overwhelmed by these things and cut a few things out, or accept that some things might have to be not-perfect anymore.
yea mostly accepting a lot of stuff WON'T GET DONE. PERIOD. Or maybe will get done eventually, but not when I think it should get done.
What would one be doing, once all of these things are being done for them..............working hard to pay for it all?
I think it's already a given the young people are working long hours, probably with little choice, maybe if they want to work, but at least if they want to advance in their chosen careers.
I've proved I can "do it all," albeit not particularly well; now I'd love to have staff. I don't mind occasional tasks like doing my taxes; I don't mind bills, but house and yard keeping? Someone else can do it. Someone to take the cats (that I don't have) to the vet? Wonderful. The car to the shop, my teeth to the dentist? Oh wait...But a personal chef to whom I hand a weekly menu--perfect. But then I'd have a bunch of people around all the time, which would cramp what little style I have, and it would soon be crowded in this not-very-big house, so I guess I'll just stumble on, doing the minimum necessary to survive and fantasizing about living a carefree existence.
Oh, I'm all in favor of simplifying my drudge work, but I think it works better to actually look at it, not just shove off a bunch of messy loose ends and crap jobs on someone else and claim it's all essential without examining whether that's true, which is sort of like boxing up your hoarded junk and putting it in a storage unit. I've been on the receiving end of that load o junk, and it has definitely colored my opinion about mindless accumulation, whether it's Stuff or processes.
All those little admin things seem like they should be simple enough. It's when they go wrong that's the problem:
When the rent check one sent the landlord through the bank's BillPay doesn't arrive.
When the cable company refuses to accept your cancellation of service.
When you're denied a parking pass for a rental car because you don't have the license number yet so one is told to hunt down the security guard instead after hours.
etc, etc, etc.
Personally I have called it Project Management vs. admin work :)
I love the idea that one has a choice without being judged for making the different choices. Why must I justify or even have my choice questioned? If there is a demand, someone can supply the solution and make a living at it.
Hi Rob, my post wasn't directed to you specifically, just a comment on the whole idea. We all pay others, all the time; our society depends on specialization. You're not expected to grow your own lettuce or build your own house, so in that way you're paying someone else to provide for your needs. But from a personal standpoint I think taking responsibility for the little things is the first step toward being a responsible person, period.
In a much bigger sense, specialization is how we roll, but I think that has led us to a sense of detachment that's a real problem and is a big part of human overshoot. I know it's not a popular idea, but I think human kind has evolved beyond sustainability in part because of specialization that has allowed us to innovate in a way that's not holistic ... our innovation doesn't come with the rest of the human or natural world's functioning in mind because we never have to think about those processes. Life Admin is extending that to say you don't even have to be aware of the process by which your own needs get met, and I can't see that as a good idea.I think the sentence structure here is lacking. Also, what the hell is "human overshoot"? Would you mind rewriting your post, so that it is more readable? Thanks.
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 1:38pm
Is anything really a crap job if it's well compensated? Isn't the compensation and working conditions the WHOLE thing? I mean most jobs are pretty crappy in terms of actual content - that's why they are called jobs (I'd definitely rather be a tax preparer for a living - I just stress out on my own taxes - start imagining IRS audits).
If your decently compensated and working conditions are reasonable, it's considered a good job period. Unfortunately some low paid work doesn't meet these conditions.
I think the concept of comparative advantage applies to individual as well as national economies. I'm better off outsourcing or automating certain tasks when my time can be employed either more profitably or more enjoyably elsewhere. Life has a certain amount of administrative overhead that you can reduce by either foregoing certain things in the full-YMOYL sense (home ownership or car ownership being obvious examples), or converting cash into time by paying someone else to do it (mow your lawn, change your oil, raise your kids, etc.).
I think it makes sense to compute the marginal utility of your time and allocate it as optimally as possible.
I'm stepping back from it and asking if specialization and the progress it brings to a society or an individual is really that good of an idea in a really big picture sense. The benefit of all this optimal allocation of effort is in the eye of the beholder; I'm pretty sure frogs and gorillas and rain forests don't think our optimization of time and effort is going all that well.
On a personal level, I surely get it; I've been on hold with Centurylink for nearly an hour. A personal assistant who simply whisked away the responsibility for this internet headache would be very nice and free up my time in a way that would probably make me a much cheerier person this afternoon. I just have to question the ethics of dumping the toxic stress on someone else just because I can.
Packy - human overshoot: too many people using too many resources, eventually causing systemic collapse.
And this all seems like the antithesis of simple living, in some respect. Hiring others to do the work we don't want to do or like to do, so we can do other things...........well, it's just sort of funky in a simple living way.
I am actually looking at what it would cost to hire a personal assistant a couple hours a month to do just this. I met with my career coach who is awesome and when I told her all my goals and how I was moving on it she thought it was a good idea. I am not sure I can afford it but I don't pay for a lot of things that other people do and I spend a lot of time feeling about the things that I am not great at, take a lot of time and energy and I don't really have to do myself. Maybe it is also being the single mom forever and ever, it feels like luxury but I have already gone through all the years of tracking expenses, planning everything out months in advance to avoid financial issues, and maintaining all the other details. There is nothing noble or simple about doing it all ourselves, but we have an image of hiring help. It seems okay to hire for yard work, kinda okay to hire for house work, but really weird to hire for someone to pay my bills and sit on hold with a company and organize the groundwork of projects. I have a list of what I would have an assistant do already, long term I want to start creating a trust to support me in retirement so I can go on retreats and deeply study Buddhism and not get evicted or the power turned off.
To be honest knowing I could do this made me tear up. I have spent my whole life stepping out of my artistic bubble to spend tremendous energy on things that are just simple to others. At one point I wanted to be diagnosed with something, anything, just to justify being challenged by these tasks. I have heard my entire life that paying bills or keeping things organized is just simple and it is assumed that I must be lazy or immature if I am not doing it. Meanwhile I can't comprehend that other people cannot communicate in a way that does not cause WW3, cook from scratch with what is available or do basic sewing/creating. I don't know if I am making sense, but I want to present this to the people who consider some tasks so simple that there must be something wrong with me that I can't do them well. Not that anyone would be mean to me personally, just that many people may not realize that it is not easy for everyone (and we are not lazy, or immature, or anything like that on purpose).
Zoe, I just wanted to respond to that. In my original post, I said 'capable adults'. Maybe that wasn't the best choice of words, what I meant was 'people who are able to do these things in a reasonably functional way.' I do believe that if certain types of things are for some reason out of reach, whether a person is very old, very young or for some other reason struggles beyond what is bearable without success, there's nothing wrong with getting help with those tasks. There's just, to me, a difference between hiring someone because you need to, and hiring someone because it's all just too too un-fun or you've made your life so over-busy you want someone else to do things that maybe don't even need doing.
If you need help with a baseline that's not in reach for you, then good for you that you can get it.
I would think hiring someone to do the things you don't want to do would be a win-win. The hiree would get money for doing what might not be at all annoying to him/her, and the hirer would have the freedom to do other things. We've all spent countless hours doing unpleasant tasks. How much experience is enough to justify opting out? If you have only so much energy and say, considerable artistic/musical/literary talent, should you expend that energy cleaning the kitchen? Or should you work on your oeuvre?
... I don't think that view is exactly wrong, I understand what you mean and yes, I'd much rather be posting online than washing dishes (and isn't that so much more delightful and productive for everyone else, that I should be posting online three hours a day? :~)), it's more like ... like I said, maybe it's sour grapes or some overblown puritan work ethic, but I think too much specialization, whether it pertains to a too-fast rate of world expansion or creating 6 sinks of dishes a day to be washed because hey, I'm not washing them, isn't a good thing ... it takes me even further from the consequences of the externalities I create.
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 8:51pm
The hiree would get money for doing what might not be at all annoying to him/her
or is annoying, but it's a paycheck ... the paycheck alone guarantees that people will do what is otherwise annoying and if desperate they will do it under any conditions. So it all depends on how well they are paid and working conditions I say.
Like being a post[wo]man sounds like a great job to me, except for the dogs, but they were working them under such impossible demands that an otherwise good job became a nightmare, maybe a lot we'd "outsource" is like that.
creating 6 sinks of dishes a day to be washed because hey, I'm not washing them
I can't imagine the professional dishwasher if such a thing existed cares if they are paid by hour, just more time on your job rather than moving on to the next client, unless they are expected to do 6 times as much dishes in the same period of time they used to do 1. I suppose it wastes water and soap though.
Agree with Tammy.
Also have to add that as a one-person household, I'd love the idea of temporarily letting someone else "drive" so to speak. Pay the bills, take out the trash, organize the social get-togethers, do laundry, keep the landscape under control, keep the car repaired, etc. I remember one famous author hired his brother-in-law to handle all this stuff and gave him the title "Major Domo."
I doubt I could do it permanently but I'd sure like a long break from life admin stuff.
Ok, here's the scolding mom in me coming out, I'm afraid. I don' think my position's really that complicated!
Resources should not be wasted, we're already living 2-6 planets beyond what we have. I hate washing dishes, and I'm not thrilled with wasting water or money, so I dirty as few of them as possible. However, if I pay someone else to wash my dirty dishes, I really have no pressing incentive to limit the creation of them, which is a waste of resources regardless of who's doing the washing, not to mention that if the dish washer is being paid purely by the hour, they have no incentive to wash conservatively - the last time someone washed dishes after a party, I came in to realize she'd been running full speed hot water into the sink continually for 20 minutes. Multiply that by six billion happily oblivious people completely unaware that they're creating ten extra dirty dishes a day or how they're being washed because they never touch them, and you have sixty billion extra dishes being washed every day. It's a silly little example, but the further people's externalities, their messes, go from their day to day reality, the worse this gets.
... like I said, maybe it's sour grapes or some overblown puritan work ethic, but I think too much specialization, whether it pertains to a too-fast rate of world expansion or creating 6 sinks of dishes a day to be washed because hey, I'm not washing them, isn't a good thing ... it takes me even further from the consequences of the externalities I create.
Well, that explains it. I didn't inherit any of that Puritan work ethic from my Puritan ancestors. I took the side of the grasshopper in that old fable--he was an artist, after all.
Ant all the way. Probably one of those irascible fire ants marching right over all the grasshoppers. :~)
I have all kinds of respect for ants, but I'm not into communal living. I think I'll just hop away...
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 11:00pm
However, if I pay someone else to wash my dirty dishes, I really have no pressing incentive to limit the creation of them, which is a waste of resources regardless of who's doing the washing, not to mention that if the dish washer is being paid purely by the hour, they have no incentive to wash conservatively
yea but they can't both be true, if they are paid by the hour, then the incentive is the money spent on the professional dishwasher (they are charging by the hour remember) - unless it falls into rounding or something.
Multiply that by six billion happily oblivious people completely unaware that they're creating ten extra dirty dishes a day or how they're being washed because they never touch them, and you have sixty billion extra dishes being washed every day.
i don't think I'm particularly aware of how dishes get created either, they just end up there, and then I'm like "dishes are dirty, ack!" I don't count them before hand or when I clean them. Of course I have a small rack for them so it limits how much work I can do at a time (which I like very much :)), but not how many dishes there are to be done - hmpf the rest of them can wait till tomorrow then, tough luck, rack is full :~).
Btw I don't pay the water bill etiher, my landlord does, and it's been that way at every place I've ever rented.
ApatheticNoMore
5-19-15, 11:05pm
I have all kinds of respect for ants, but I'm not into communal living.
I'd love communal living as long as I can also have somewhere private to get away to when I want (co-housing not roommates in other words). However I'm not into the work ethic.
Yes, the money is an incentive, but as your water bill example points out, you don't change what you're not aware of. Who knows, maybe you could cut your water bill in half, but you think hey, I can pay the rent ok and I have enough to think about, why would I worry about that. Which is a perfectly intelligent, sanity-saving way to think. But not seeing the bill is one less incentive to be aware or make a change, even if change would be better than the status quo.
I don't see the "bill" when my Vanguard shares go up. I have no idea why they went up, I just feel happy. Perhaps if they included an accounting of how many jobs went overseas, how many forests fell, how many people's water supply became undrinkable this month, how much of my "balanced fund" is invested in Monsanto, I might not be quite so inclined to cheer mindlessly.
Dishes: when I cook, there are maybe six items in the sink at the end of it which I wash before I sit down. When DH cooks, there are thirty. Which I wash. Which is why there are 30. >:( (when I watch Master Chef, sorry Packy, I always think: Gordon Ramsey, you arrogant snot, who's going to wash all those dishes!)
Jane, I'm really more of a praying mantis myself. Singular, carnivorous, and with intensity that's a little scary.
i am capable of doing things very basically, not too old or infirm to manage my life. But i also have no qualms about paying someone and treating them decently to do a job for me. i paid movers in this last move, i once hired someone to come clean my house while we took a 3 week vacation, i hire tax preparers some years. i just don't think there is anything wrong with picking and choosing what you can afford to hire out and what you feel would be better or more efficiently done by an expert. i don't really have any sort of puritan work ethic, and i am really aware of what people think of that!
Heck people pay me to care for their kids but also feed them almost 3 meals a day, help with homework, encourage social skills, communicate with their teachers and build a relationship through play on a daily basis. they are still great parents just generally with long work hours.
Quasi-religious zeal. Hopping faster...
Have you accepted Al Gore as your savior, Grasshopper? Let's chat for a minute ...
http://travel4wildlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/face_mantis.jpg
resources can be conserved in the sharing model. People living in timy spaces and sharing the social spaces is one example, as in the article that I believe started this thread. It could be argued that big houses where the owners do it themselves in all areas are much more resource intensive than using the sharing economy and living small.
Tammy, like ANM, I have no problem with the sharing model as long as I have some private space, in fact I think the sharing part's a great idea.
But really, going back to the OP at last, :|(, everybody thinks extending the privileged boarding school mentality to 20-somethings who'd prefer not clean up after themselves or take responsibility for the adult minutia of life - only the ones who have the money to pay for extended maid and management services, that is - is a good idea? Really?
Um. You're certainly green, aren't you?
I voted for him a couple of times. Does that count?
I really must be going...
ApatheticNoMore
5-20-15, 1:55am
But really, going back to the OP at last, everybody thinks extending the privileged boarding school mentality to 20-somethings who'd prefer not clean up after themselves or take responsibility for the adult minutia of life - only the ones who have the money to pay for extended maid and management services, that is - is a good idea? Really?
It's more I understand the frazzled, going crazy, can't keep up, feel overwhelmed with everything, feels like things are falling overboard all the time, regularly screaming in the car on the drive home, feeling. Now MY solution to this was kind of to realize everything would never get done, things would slip and thus would be LESS THAN optimal in results, it just has to be expected, I wasn't going to become a perfectionist or a robot who never goofs off and works 4 hours after coming home from work every day. In fact I'd probably be somewhat lazy and at other times just be so completely beat that I'd just lying around unable to do much of anything in exhaustion, yes I've had days I just lay in bed after coming home.
But giving some tasks away might ALSO be a possible solution, that it's hard to be opposed to entirely. I can't even see paying someone's bills or scheduling appointments for them a necessarily having to be a particularly bad job (but it could easily be these days when work conditions are so sucky). Routine and not the height of self actualization as a job? Of course! But that's most jobs.
The root cause in the case of the 20 somethings in the article is probably that they are being asked to work ridiculous work weeks that may frankly be inhumane in their exceeding long hours. Maybe delegating allows them to have social lives, which is another undesirable trade off they could make - sacrifice social life to career advancement and life management on top. Maybe a case of pick 2 out of 3: career (which is a way too demanding career let's say), life management, social life. But maybe none of it would be necessary if they weren't working ridiculous hours.
I just tend to be aware that with "hiring help" as it goes on in the U.S., that there's often a pretty big wealth and thus power differential between say the upper middle class hiring poor immigrants that often goes on. And neither is "the 1%" or anything necessarily. But there is potential for workers to be treated far worse doing your chores than you are, but that usually happens when companies get in the middle and when the only thing you want is cheap, it's not inherent to delegating.
Plus everyone gives some tasks away, like hiring movers, yes I've moved myself with non-professional help, but furniture is heavy and probably more so (have a newer heavier bed) and also I didn't know how to drive the rented pickup truck. Yes I thought: "it's just like driving a compact car, only bigger". Only it's not, it's *much* bigger and your much higher up. I made it, but I realized I wasn't particularly safe behind the wheel of that thing. I knew how to drive a car, not a truck.
It's a good idea if they are paying for it. How is that any different than wealthy old people paying a personal assistant? They are paying a higher rent which includes these extra services. They are not extending their dependent childhood, when they are paying customers.
I'm stepping back from it and asking if specialization and the progress it brings to a society or an individual is really that good of an idea in a really big picture sense. The benefit of all this optimal allocation of effort is in the eye of the beholder; I'm pretty sure frogs and gorillas and rain forests don't think our optimization of time and effort is going all that well.
At the risk of offending the amphibian community, I'll keep ordering out for kung pao chicken until that oft-rescheduled doomsday arrives.
I'm a big fan of specialization, and don't necessarily think we'd all be better off as subsistence farmers or goatherds. Call me selfish, but I prefer specialists remove my appendix, pilot my airplane or teach my kid French to doing it myself. I don't see it as all that destructive to my soul not to churn my own butter or rewire my own house. The resource that concerns me most is time, preferably spent in interesting ways.
At the risk of offending the amphibian community, I'll keep ordering out for kung pao chicken until that oft-rescheduled doomsday arrives.
I'm a big fan of specialization, and don't necessarily think we'd all be better off as subsistence farmers or goatherds. Call me selfish, but I prefer specialists remove my appendix, pilot my airplane or teach my kid French to doing it myself. I don't see it as all that destructive to my soul not to churn my own butter or rewire my own house. The resource that concerns me most is time, preferably spent in interesting ways.
It's so rarely that I agree with LDAHL that I'm going on the record. And like Iris Lily, I believe that one--if not the only--purpose of life is the enjoyment of it. So bring on the minions!
iris lilies
5-20-15, 10:31am
Iris - that's in dollars. If you go to their website (https://www.thecollective.co.uk/living/rooms) you can see they have rooms ranging from 210-400+ pounds per week. I thought it was quite expensive for a studio, even by San Francisco standards. But it does come furnished and includes cleaning, wifi, TV.
Packy - Socialist? I think of it as more communal.
Today I took time to look at a few of the places this London company provides. I don't get it. They don't provide meals. What, again, are they providing? It's like an extended stay hotel room, I guess. There is (horrors!) still kitchens in each of these places. I would want a meal plan included.
iris lilies
5-20-15, 10:32am
Basically this is assisted living for younger people. I would throw in a cafeteria like setting and call it good.
Yep, agreed.
Funny, this thread has been obsessing me all day. Thought if I took some time and let it simmer I might come up with something useful, or just let it go, but I just keep bumping up against my own extreme resistance to the idea.
I'm looking at Aqua Blue's post there. "Basically this is assisted living for younger people."
And as far as I'm concerned, that's the root of the problem. This idea of paying someone to take away your basic life tasks, even if you're young and energetic and bright eyed, entrenches the idea that it's normal and acceptable that life is so burdensome and miserable and complex that it can't be enjoyed (or even endured) without commercial assistance. If you turn that around, while "society" sure has its perks, it's the complex commercialism that makes our lives so burdensome in the first place.
Personally, I don't want to embrace "normal life" as having demands I perceive as so impossible and unpleasant that I'd be grateful if given the opportunity to opt out of them, even if I had to pay for the privilege.
Personally, this is a wake up call to restructure my life - or to restructure my thoughts about my basic life tasks, at least - so I'm not tempted to pay into a system I disagree with for the privilege of opting out of it.
Some people enlist spouses (or children) to do "life admin." Some would rather their minions bunk elsewhere...One person expected to do it all is a new phenomenon.
Some people enlist spouses (or children) to do "life admin." Some would rather their minions bunk elsewhere...One person expected to do it all is a new phenomenon.
My wife does a good portion of my "life admin" thing, and oddly enough, I do a fair amount of hers.
Some people enlist spouses (or children) to do "life admin." Some would rather their minions bunk elsewhere...One person expected to do it all is a new phenomenon. Sigh. Jane, you not-so-ignorant slut, you just put your finger squarely on my problem, thank you.
I am the enlisted spouse, "drafted" might be a better word. Since becoming a spouse, I bust my hump just to put out fires and break even and be at net zero. You might think that would make me ecstatic about paying someone else to do it all, but I used to actually see happy progress when I did my own admin. Knowing that life admin can be a source of pride and progress and satisfaction and peace of mind, that in fact it can be the first and main source of it, that in fact I CUSTOM DESIGNED MY FREAKING LIFE TO BE ABOUT GETTING SATISFACTION FROM LIFE ADMIN :devil:... I'm absolutely rabid about not giving away the opportunity. I suppose that conviction is living in the past ...
or maybe the future ... :(
I am having a pretty strong reaction like Kib but in the other direction. I have spent so much time in my life trying to prove something because I do all these tasks. honestly when my kids were young I loved doing a lot of cooking, the cleaning went with it. I kept a strict budget and did most of my own tasks in many ways. I wasn't in a great marriage so there was not a give and take of life tasks, basically I say that I know how to do everything myself because I was married for a long time (and I hope that is not anyone else's experience). I even have the background of getting all zen like about everyday tasks so I do not judge washing dishes as less than doing another task. I am just tired, and I want to spend my energy other ways, and I see how women (and men) in my parents generation and older either find comfort in doing all these tasks or are burdened by having spent so many years on the same things. My reaction that is negative however is that I am ready to let some of these things go, not need to do it all myself, and then I feel the strong judgment. It taps into the feeling that as a woman I need to earn a living, have a career not a job, raise great kids, keep my fridge clean, cook healthy meals, take care of all the paperwork to support everything, and continually prove myself to avoid judgment.
So kib maybe you and I both need to find our middle chill point and learn a little from the other side. I actually am relaxing just talking about it, and remember, we don't have to do ANY of this if we don't want to so it is just paying a lot of attention to other people's choices.
can be[/I] a source of pride and progress and satisfaction and peace of mind, that in fact it can be the first and main source of it, that in fact I CUSTOM DESIGNED MY FREAKING LIFE TO BE ABOUT GETTING SATISFACTION FROM LIFE ADMIN :devil:... I'm absolutely rabid about not giving away the opportunity. I suppose that conviction is living in the past ...
or maybe the future ... :(
so hmm, it may be that with others appearing to put little value on doing these tasks themselves when you feel great pride and satisfaction in them is difficult. I can understand that, when we make choices in our lives like this instead of just falling into a popular lifestyle then it is pretty often that we are affected. I would love to say that I am not affected when I am in a similar position but I very much am.
I have the rabid feelings too, I rabidly feel that just because I am female and gave birth does not mean I am in charge of cooking every meal or washing every dish (or managing someone to wash the dishes). 2 out of 3 of my kids love to cook and are great at it, the other can do it when she needs to but has a boyfriend who is an excellent cook. And we all suck at dishes.
Yes Zoe Girl, absolutely yes. My "Joy of Admin" was all about choices, including plenty of choices not to do things and control over what I decided was important or not. I once had a flourishing crazy garden and someone gave me five dozen eggs, long story, so I didn't go grocery shopping for nearly a month and lived on omlets and salad. Why the hell not! I thought that was an excellent way to live - um, the ability to choose, not the diet - and I guess in this thread I'm wishing that sort of confidence and security on other people. To me, saying you'll pay someone else rather than re-examine how you want to live is like agreeing to give up your right to design your own life, and I think so many people don't know how empowering and FUN it can be to design your own life, even if there's a little bit of ick left.
I basically feel a lot of the same pressures you do, and they make me nuts, but my imagined solution is to go back to a place where I had boundaries that kept the pressure at bay, rather than giving away my old source of personal strength (and even paying for the privilege!) I would like to be appreciated for all this extra work, but mostly I would just like to regain the ability to make streamlined personally designed non-traditional choices. I'm not quite sure how I got here to this place of yes-dear leave-it-on-my-desk I'll-put-it-on-my-calendar that's-ok right-away-dear I'll-have-dinner-ready-in-a-jiff-what-would-you-like-oh-bacon-and-Little-Debbies-sure-dear, but I don't like it, I don't like me as this woman living a classic American life out of some suburban primer from 1960. At this point I'm Jane Wyatt AND Robert Young, and it's actively not enjoyable.
All by way of saying I think we might actually be on the same page, but I've been lucky enough to have had a different past experience that has shown me an option other than paying away the gray, and I wish other people knew it too. I realize this is a different ballgame if you have kids, but as adults, we should have the privilege of orchestrating our own basics to fit our own needs and skills and desires.
-- thank you, that was a really interesting way of looking at the other side of the coin! And I agree, it just lowered my blood pressure about 20 points. :)
To me, saying you'll pay someone else rather than re-examine how you want to live is like agreeing to give up your right to design your own life, and I think so many people don't know how empowering and FUN it can be to design your own life, even if there's a little bit of ick left.
I question your premise that outsourcing basic tasks is in some way inimical to re-examining your life. Everyone needs to decide how best to deploy their limited resources, particularly time, and we are all more or less continuously 'designing our lives" with every mundane choice. If I find gardening tedious, it makes sense eat purchased carrots. If paying a kid to mow my lawn (or letting it get a little longer) allows me to spend one of the limited summer afternoons I'm allotted at Wrigley Field, the rational choice seems obvious.
I can certainly understand kib's thought that it would be better for everyone if the tired overworked people managed to change society so that no one was iverworked, the same way it would be better overall if some underpaid worker at walmart worked to get a union in place that could negotiate for better wages for all. But people have been trying that for years so i dont blme that walmart employee for taking the easier route of applying for a job at costco or some other employer that might actually treat them decently. Someone who does t have the time or energy for life admin is also not likely to have the time or energy to try and change the world.
Not the whole world! Lol. All I want to change, all I'm advocating trying to change, is one's own world. You find having 50 bills so complicated you need someone to manage them, maybe it's time to cut cable. You find cooking a meal for yourself so odious you want to scream, maybe it's time to find a new recipe book. You find making your bed such a tiresome prospect you want to crawl back into it, get a duvet ... or just decide making the bed really doesn't matter.
I understand, a lot of times the problem is not the actual tasks but the tasks on top of everything else - job, studies, transporting yourself from place to place, friends and meetings and Issues and childcare and focusing on your ouvre and so on. The easiest place to cut complication and irritation is at the bottom with all the stupidwork anyone could do. But I think mindfulness about what you've taken on in toto is a better first step. YMMV - and clearly does. :~)
(And I will concede, some of this is a soapbox issue for me - there's a lot of damage being done that would just go away if we'd look at our assumptions: Must Have Lawn. Don't have time for lawn or enjoy lawn care, must have gardener, now have new bill and scheduling issues, must stress over cost of this and then must hire someone to do scheduling and billing and field complaints about leaf blower noise and stress over paying them as well. Must get second job. Must get car because that much bus travel is over the top. Must work extra hours at second job to pay for car. Ayup. Or plant ivy and get on with your life.)
ApatheticNoMore
5-22-15, 2:29pm
I can certainly understand kib's thought that it would be better for everyone if the tired overworked people managed to change society so that no one was overworked, the same way it would be better overall if some underpaid worker at walmart worked to get a union in place that could negotiate for better wages for all. But people have been trying that for years so i dont blme that walmart employee for taking the easier route of applying for a job at costco or some other employer that might actually treat them decently. Someone who does t have the time or energy for life admin is also not likely to have the time or energy to try and change the world.
+1000
but of course all that one should be doing for the world is part of one's life admin nonsense that's floating on in one's head driving nuts, until one is kind of: screw it. Sometimes the congress person won't get called, some things I probably should be involved with I won't be ... etc. etc.
And yes my mom scheduled the appointment and drove me to my last dental appointment (it had been a year and a half). Talk about life admin. She doesn't' even mind, so why should anyone else?
Must get car because that much bus travel is over the top. Must work extra hours at second job to pay for car. Ayup. Or plant ivy and get on with your life.)
I think it works more like: must take public transit, public transit takes hours, must move close to work, must hire movers, must pack, must cancel and reschedule everything. A couple years down the line, not at same job, must move again to be close to work, must hire movers etc.. People have cars mostly because they are much less headache, not that they are good.
I don't have a lawn, but the landlord didn't water the roses all last summer (yes you would think it being their property ... ) and I was kind of overwhelmed by everything as I say and several died until I finally noticed and started watering. And I was to myself like: "gah, don't you notice anything?" It felt like another thing I was too overwhelmed to even notice.
I guess my perspective is moving more backwards. I was definitely the do everything myself person, I say I was a crunchy granola mom. Now I am more than ready to do the next stage of my life and there are not jobs that fulfill some of my goals that are also really manageable. I have so much I want to do (job, mediation side work, upcycle sewing). I stay pretty simple but if someone else wants to work longer hours and have someone mow the lawn it does not affect my life. When my mom ran a senior daycare and put in long hours she hired a housekeeper. Long term as a single person who has spent years as the caregiver it is unwise for me to take a cut in pay and responsibility and have that impact on retirement accounts. I already put tremendous effort into doing it myself and 10 years after my divorce I still have deep impact on my earning and career potential. If I had known this I would have put more career effort in and paid for a few more services.
I would say that my organization has many lower paid workers, we pay a decent hourly wage but it is part time after school, some before school shifts. So many of our staff take the bus. Other than some general consideration of area of the city we do not go very far to accommodate public transportation. All 3 of my kids have had difficulty with entry level jobs or school and public transportation. Public schools here use the regular city buses. We ended up getting cars whenever possible or arranging rides. My oldest works late and so there are not buses then (and the safety of taking a bus at 3 am)( I am sure there is someone who thinks she could take a bus at 3 am, so please respect that we are not comfortable with that). So I have many many times woken up and picked her up at 3 am, now she has a car and a loan but since her siblings and I had been supporting that for a couple years on and off that affects the whole family. That is reality of working in many cases.
Other than that when I get feeling intense about this I think about what is triggering it, do I feel somehow not valued, do I need to see if this actually impacts my life, do I need to adjust something that is out of balance.
ANM, I kinda think the roses illustrates my point!
1. The landlord owns a building with roses, so it's her responsibility to ensure their care, or hire it out. Their care is her life admin.
2. She gets overwhelmed and doesn't do it.
3. This is apparently a tacit signal for you to take over her life admin, in a sense she's hiring it out. You don't do it, it appears from what you've said you didn't know it needed doing until it was too late.
4. The roses die and no one feels good about it.
Now you could argue that if she'd just Really hired out this admin task, if she'd gotten a gardener or had a formal arrangement with you, this wouldn't have happened.
I would argue that if she'd looked at the assumption that roses were practical and decided to fix the issue and just planted a no-maintenance natural landscape, there would be no issue of dead roses at all, and no admin headache for anyone.
ETA ... sigh. I really need to stop doing this. ETA: I am not judging. I don't care if your mother takes you to the dentist. I don't care if someone wants to work longer hours to buy a car. What I am suggesting is that a lot of the things we take on, or hire away, or stress out about, aren't necessary or beneficial to our lives in the first place, and that we might consider whether they have a place before we complicate our lives accomodating them.
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