Life admin can seem all-consuming, stress-inducing, scary and intense, especially when you try and tackle it all in one go. It can be a veritable rabbit hole of internet searching and comparisons that can make you feel overwhelmed and anxious, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
By being methodical, and tackling one task a day over the course of a week, you can make a huge dent in that life-admin albatross, freeing up time to be with your nearest and dearest, and also helping to lessen the mental load, making way for less stress.
Follow our daily guide (with some tasks needing to be performed just once a month), to help crack the humdrum of life admin.
Monday – update your calendar and appointments
Check off and schedule those long-overdue appointments for you and your family at the dentist, optician or GP. And if you have children, use this time to update your calendar, noting all those school events that can suddenly creep up on you. Pop “World Book Day” in your planner alongside the various kids’ parties, relatives’ birthdays (not your third cousin, that’s what Facebook is for) and make sure you’re covered for cards and gifts.
Tuesday – renewals and policies
There are renewals for car, home, contents, buildings, warranties, boiler, drainage, pet, travel and life insurance – and that’s not even all of them. It can be staggering how many policies we need. Ease the process: when that renewal letter or email comes through, or you need to take out a new policy, head to Compare the Market, which makes simple work of finding great deals. Then build a folder – either physical or digital – with all your policy details and documents in one place.
Wednesday – plan your social life
Somewhere in the whirlwind of paperwork and life admin, you have to find time for the good stuff – the things that make life great and bring you joy. Use Wednesday to arrange to see friends, plan a BYO barbecue, or start doing a recce of potential holidays or day trips you want to take with the family. Also, make some happy plans for the weekends ahead.
Thursday – deal with ‘the drawer’
Everyone has a drawer in their home with bills, letters, statements, receipts, and other important documents you “file” away, to be dealt with later. Well, “later” is today. Keep on top of the drawer on a weekly basis and it won’t be nearly as scary. You know you’ve reached peak organisation when you have a home-based filing cabinet for all your documents: don’t question just how cathartic it can be sliding those papers away. If you’d rather go paperless, consider downloading an app such as Scanbot, which lets you scan and store everything digitally.
Friday – check your finances and pay your bills
You can practically taste it: it’s almost tools down as the weekend stretches out before you. Now is a good time to check your bank balance, pay any bills, and make sure you’re on track with your weekly budget, so you’re fully prepared for how much you can spend before Monday comes around again. Don’t forget to account for all those pending direct debits, your weekly food shop, and any weekend activities you have planned, such as movies, soft play or a nice bottle of red (not all at the same time, obviously).
Saturday – food plan
If you work Monday to Friday and do your big weekly food shop over the weekend, meal planning your food for the following week can not only help rein in your budget, but also tick off the daily quandary of choosing what to cook. It also helps ensure you don’t come back with a family box of Maltesers, a giant bag of Doritos, a pot of tzatziki and hot cross buns – but still no supper.
Sunday – the Sunday Switch
Make the most of your Sunday mornings by taking just a few minutes to check out Compare the Market’s Sunday Switch . By spending about the same amount of time as it takes to toast a hot cross bun (they did come in handy after all) you could find yourself switching to a cheaper energy deal. And if you’ve managed all this life admin during the week, plus switched and saved, you can download Compare the Market’s Meerkat app. This has brilliant two-for-one offers at specified restaurants from Sunday to Thursday. Reward yourself – you’ve earned it.
Compare the Market’s #SundaySwitch is a nationwide initiative to show people how easy it is to switch energy with comparethemarket.com. Why not find a few spare minutes this Sunday to see how much you could save? T&Cs apply
