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026: Optimising kid admin
577 Plays5 years ago
Deal with the admin generated by and organised for children, which starts as soon as you get pregnant and never seems to end.
This episode talks about how you can address the many admin tasks you need to sort when you have kids, including:
- health
- daycare, school and school holidays
- social life including birthday parties
- extracurricular activities
- decluttering their stuff - clothes, toys, books, artworks, craft.
Mia and Dinah share their top tips including:
- having a launchpad and visible weekly schedule
- systems to deal with arts & craft and keepsake items
- using a form filling app to make filling forms a breeze
- using WhatsApp groups for school and team communication
- scheduling out the school holidays using your shared calendar
- using apps for sporting team management
- using checklists for birthday party organisation.
- Dinah talks about a scavenger hunt birthday party she has organised for her daughter which was fun admin
- Mia talks about sorting out her superannuation at work
- Dinah talks about the challenge of organising visas for an upcoming trip
Mia talks about using the iOs shortcuts app to develop automated sequences on her phone and the Files App to scan documents to cloud storage.
RESOURCESEpisode 3 - Managing passwords and form filling data
Episode 4 - Mastering To Do Lists
Episodes 6,7 & 8 - Decluttering
School Holiday Program - online web directory
Team Stuff & Team App - sporting team apps
SHAREPlease head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm Dinah Roe Roberts, an operations manager who sometimes feels like an underpaid executive assistant for her two children.
When does kid admin start?
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer, and when shocked to discover from the minute you get pregnant, the kid admin begins. This episode will help you optimize the kid men so you're not drowning in paperwork. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. The life admin generated by children is disproportionate to their age and size.
00:00:40
Speaker
It starts when you're pregnant and may need to enroll them at a daycare or a school that's got a waiting list. And then you might find yourself collecting ultrasound prints of them in utero and you need to file that somewhere. And then you start making lists of all the baby stuff you need to get. And who knows where all this admin ends because we are certainly not there yet.
Challenges of Kid Admin Tasks
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, I do know that there is so much life admin that relates to children. And I think that that's probably why we've been inspired to get this podcast going, because that's probably what tipped us over the edge. But yeah, I think you can be quite organised in keeping your own little life on track to a degree. But when you have kids suddenly, exponentially, the paperwork explodes.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, so there's kid admin that falls into so many categories. Obviously, there's the, just from when you get pregnant, all of the health stuff and health records to keep. Then you've got the daycare or kinder or school and managing their school holidays. And then once they get a bit older, you're starting to manage their social life and their birthday parties. Yeah, even when they're little, just organizing their birthday parties are a thing, but when they start getting invited to other people's parties,
00:01:54
Speaker
Suddenly there's that, and then there's all the extracurricular activities that might start happening, which all have their own paperwork and schedules.
00:02:02
Speaker
And then they want a bank account and pocket money. And then you're starting to look after their financial affairs. And then they just accumulate so much stuff. They've got the clothes, the toys, the books, the artwork that just comes in the door. Decluttering becomes a thing for them. It does.
Transformative Admin Systems for Kids
00:02:17
Speaker
But I've really found that the foundations of our life admin system have actually been transformative for our family when it's come to all of the admin associated with them.
00:02:28
Speaker
So we're going to explore some of these categories in depth, but we've also had episodes in the past that are worth listening to, to get some of the details. Yeah. So the one on the shared family calendar is definitely worth listening to. And that was right back in episode one, but going paperless episode two is crucial as well as
00:02:47
Speaker
form data for frequently filled out forms in episode three. And I'm getting you to do this in order in episode four, scheduling in episode five. And then decluttering episode six, seven and eight. We got very much excited about decluttering, but they're all worth listening to if you want some of the
00:03:05
Speaker
more extended life hacks than what we're gonna talk through today. Now, man, this is a topic that is really important to get a handle of because it actually can be quite traumatic if you mess up the admin for your child and you miss a birthday party that they were supposed to go to or forget them to get them dressed up on the right day for book week or they have to even spend a day in the principal's office because you forgot to fill out an excursion form.
00:03:32
Speaker
They can be guilt, guilt and more guilt, so it's important to get right. That's right. They can be guilt on your part. They can be sheer FOMO or embarrassment for your kid. Or it could just contribute to all the usual stresses of trying to have forms sent off to various officials in time.
Time-Saving Admin Practices
00:03:51
Speaker
So there's a few reasons why setting up systems to deal with the kids life admin are important.
00:03:56
Speaker
You can save a bunch of time because you can be filling out a lot of forms for a lot of different activities and you want to have that information close at hand. You also will have peace of mind knowing that you haven't forgotten something or missed a deadline if you can stay on top of this.
00:04:11
Speaker
And it's also can foster household harmony because the tasks and responsibilities can be shared more easily. Certainly is a hot button topic in the mental load that people are talking about all over the place and sharing some of these tasks with your partner.
00:04:27
Speaker
Absolutely. I reckon this area is one of those ones that, you know, if you're in a partnership, it's often the domain of the mum in the household to be on top of all the kids stuff. And there's no reason for that to be the case. If you've got systems where anyone can access this information and everyone has the responsibility of contributing to it.
Tracking Kids' Activities
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. And you can also start teaching your kids quite early how to handle their own admin and learn some useful life skills and effective habits early on.
00:04:56
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to sort of jump a little bit all over the place here because there's lots to talk about, but I guess the basis for me is having a weekly schedule. So each of my kids have their own schedule drawn on a sheet of paper and it's stuck to the wall above where their school bags are put. So my daughter has written all hers out, sort of, you know, Monday, there's singing lessons, Tuesday, there's taekwondo, Wednesday, she had to take her library bag, so on, so on.
00:05:25
Speaker
And for my son, it's words and pictures. He's a preppy, but the same thing. So each day of the week, he knows what's on, what he has to remember to take, whether there's extracurricular stuff or whether they're at aftercare or which day, you know, they can order their lunch at school. And I've also hung their library bags and sport bags next to their school bed. So they have this sort of launch pad area. So at least on a weekly basis, we kind of are all across where everyone's supposed to be.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, we used to have one of those schedules on the fridge as well, but we don't need to have it anymore, which is interesting, I think, because the kids have just got a little bit older. And so all of the information around extracurricular activities is in our shared calendar, which my daughter, who's got her own phone, can access. And in terms of making sure that they've got all the things they need for school, the system has really changed to
00:06:17
Speaker
the homework book always goes in the school bag so as soon as the homework's finished it goes straight back in the school bag and same with the library book so library books go back and forward to school a few times before they finally get unloaded but at least they never get lost in their house
00:06:34
Speaker
I do write the kids schedule a little bit on the meal planner though that we have on our fridge because I'm sort of as I'm noting down what things we're going to have for dinner, which nights I'm looking at the schedule to see if there's particular nights we need to have super easy meals because I know that we're going to be out and about. So the meal planner has sort of become our quasi weekly schedule because they can look up on there and remember what day we won't be home.
00:06:59
Speaker
So does your son, or what does he do to stay across his schedule? Or is his schedule pretty easy? His schedule's a bit easier. And I think they now just know they don't need to have a remote. It's in their mind, I guess, because he only has one thing after school and one thing on the weekend. So it makes it pretty easy to remember. Yeah, I'm kind of curious to experiment with the Google Home Assistant. So we have one of those Google Home, we have two actually, we got given them.
00:07:27
Speaker
And there's one in each room for the kids and you can automate them to set the alarm and when it wakes you up, like there's a morning routine kind of thing you can set up and it will wake you up and tell you what the weather's going to be and tell you what you've got on that day. I like the idea of playing around with that and seeing if that can help as well. That's a great idea. So what kind of systems do you have in place to deal with schoolwork or, you know, arts and crafts that might come home?
00:07:55
Speaker
So I think that we've got a system that deals with all kind of cheap-sake items, including arts and crafts and awesome schoolwork. We don't get as much of that arts and crafts anymore, I must admit. So years ago I got a plastic tub that had like section dividers, like sort of hanging files so that for every year they've got a hanging file for that year.
Preserving Children's Work
00:08:18
Speaker
And so as soon as something comes home and it's been on the fridge for a while or
00:08:22
Speaker
you know, hung around, blue-tacked on the wall and we decide it's worth keeping, we put it into that divider for the year. So it really means that, you know, they're sort of constrained into one level of hanging file for a year so it can't get too out of control. Oh, we found it. Do you remember like when the kids were in like daycare and kinder, the amount of drawings and paintings that would come home every week?
00:08:46
Speaker
I know that your kids are particularly pretty bad as well. I would almost get to kindle daycare and see the pile and start getting angry. Jesus, what am I supposed to do with all this stuff?
00:08:59
Speaker
I used to use it for gift wrapping paper. Yes, and you know what, we are still working through the backlog of that because there was so much of it. But we tried a few different strategies. I had Lisa get it and put it in a box as well and I thought I'm going to take digital photos of it and turn it into a book. We all know how that ended up. Didn't happen. No surprise.
00:09:21
Speaker
So then we moved to a system where, you know, stuff would come home. If it was a keeper, it would go up on a wall or the fridge or the shelf, depending on if it was a craft or painting. And then when that area got full, it was like a one in, one out kind of rule. If it was still a keeper by the time it had come down, then I just decided to glue it into a scrapbook. Like I bought a $1 scrapbook from the supermarket and I just glued it in, which is actually now a really nice keepsake because the kids have these scrapbooks full of all year old art.
00:09:50
Speaker
Some of it went into the wrapping paper box, so we use it as wrapping paper. And now the kids have their own bedrooms and they just stick stuff on their own walls if they like it. You know, as much go up there as they can handle. So that's good. We also have a wall in the study where we have some things and that's just getting plastered. And we're just sort of, it's like a mosaic now, we're just putting stuff on top of each other.
00:10:13
Speaker
That's fine. We did actually frame a couple of pieces of artwork from each child, which is actually quite nice. We've actually won in our dining room. And I went to a friend's holiday house recently and they had framed a whole heap of their kids artwork and put them in the holiday house. And I thought, oh, that's such a nice idea. You know, it's a really relaxed setting. You don't really, I think keeping a few and having them as a memory is great, but you really only need
00:10:37
Speaker
yeah five or six I know I remember feeling quite traumatized about throwing stuff out I felt bad for some reason like I wasn't honoring their gifts I don't know totally unuseful emotion and of course I didn't notice or care when I finally did throw
00:10:57
Speaker
And I think that as they get older too, I just went through the box with my daughter and did a little bit of a cold. And we went right from the beginning to the end and it took us a couple of hours. She loved it, but she actually got rid of about 50% of the stuff that she was like, oh.
00:11:13
Speaker
That's not very good mum. Let's just keep one or two pieces of art from every year. So I think that it can be easy to feel guilty, but the reality is she didn't actually want the participation ribbons from her first athletics carnival. She wanted the ribbons where she'd come first or second. She wasn't really interested in keeping those kind of tokenistic ones that I had felt she probably needed to keep. That's interesting.
00:11:38
Speaker
In terms of schoolwork, if there's an assignment or a story or a poem or something that warrants long term keeping up, started sticking them in the same binder folder that I use for their school photo and their achievement certificate and their school reports. And then at the end of the term, I don't know if this happens at your kids' school, but they bring home lots of exercise books. And I might tell a little story here about a certain mother-in-law who may have kept his certain sons.
00:12:07
Speaker
schoolwork that we still have at home, just basic schoolwork. And I thought, I can't, we don't have the space for this kind of thing. So now at the end of term, we go through it with them and we're like, oh, this is great. Look how they're going. We might shout out to grandparents and other family members, but then it's recycled by the end of the school holidays.
00:12:28
Speaker
We just can't hang on to that stuff. There's no point, really. There isn't. The only thing that I have kept, which for me is worth giving, is they're writing books because then the stories are hilarious. And they're actually memory joggers because they're usually about something that's happened in your family. So when I was going through the tub recently with my daughter and reading her stories from prep on grade one, it was really fun. I really enjoyed it. And what do you do with school reports?
00:12:53
Speaker
So ours have been electronic for some time now and I do share, save them in our cloud storage drive. But we've always printed them out as well so the kids can read them and show them to their grandparents. And so I put that in the same plastic, you know, in our little hanging file. So they've got little hanging files, got their school photo, their school report, a couple of pieces of artwork and a few ribbons and any other sort of special cards or letters and the writing book. And that's their year. Yeah.
00:13:20
Speaker
Ours have been paper until this year and it was a bit of a, you know, I like the fact that the school's going paperless, but at the same time, the kids weren't going to read them on the screen. They just, it's too much of looking like an essay and I wanted to share them with grandparents. So I didn't actually print them out. I have saved them in the cloud storage, but we didn't get that same sort of sharing that we had previous years. Maybe for this term, the end of this term, I will actually print them out.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah. So I think that the next thing to talk about Mia is probably the bane of all parents' lives, which is form filling. Oh, the forms. Now, there's forms for all sorts of things.
00:14:04
Speaker
School, kinder,
Digital Tools for Admin Efficiency
00:14:06
Speaker
daycare, excursions, extracurricular activities, camps. There are many, many forms that need to be filled out for your child over time. And annoyingly, the same form really over and over again when it comes to our school. Every excursion we have to fill out.
00:14:25
Speaker
You know, it's not just about giving permission, but we have to fill out their Medicare number and their doctor's details. And it's like, oh my gosh, you guys have this on file, surely. Does your school still do that on paper or is it digital? Now we've been digital for ages, so we have very few paper forms. And so investing in the password manager with all the frequent form filling data has really made it so simple for me. I can honestly, in most cases,
00:14:55
Speaker
just click you know fill in the form and it's and it's done almost immediately. I think that the real trick to it for my point of view is to then make sure you add it into your shared calendar so immediately so if you fill out a form and it's got a school excursion to make sure you put it in there because generally with a school excursion there's a different bag or a different lunch or anything like that and if there's anything to buy immediately add it to your to-do list or your shopping list so that
00:15:26
Speaker
things can go awry. Yeah, I agree. It's kind of essential to get those little details of the excursion into the event on the shared calendar. There's always a little WhatsApp group panic session from some parents like, what bag are they taking? Do they need a hat? Are we taking lunch? Do they want to get fed? What time are they coming back?
00:15:42
Speaker
So hanging onto that detail is useful. I think with forms, I agree. I don't have a lot of online forms to fill out. It's mostly paper, but I do have my page of frequent data and it's got Medicare numbers, the Centrelink numbers, the doctor's contact details, emergency contact people. And then it's like passport number and frequent flyer and.
00:16:04
Speaker
private health insurance details for certain forms. And I guess I've got into the habit now of when the forms come home, I literally, as soon as I take it out of the bag, I fill it out immediately and I put it back in the bag. It's one of those two minutes, two easy tasks, all the data's at hand, you can just do it instead of perhaps the piece of paper going missing or getting back late.
00:16:26
Speaker
And I think that's interesting because a lot of people at our school complain about the fact that they are all electronic and so it's quite easy to miss a notification in your email. And so I've really got into that discipline of not opening the email unless I'm planning to action it straight away. I think that's a really important discipline to get into because once you've opened it and forgotten about it, you don't have that physical reminder and it can't get lost.
00:16:48
Speaker
in your inbox so really having that idea that as soon as you open the email you're going to action it. And I think the same is probably to be said about birthday party invitations. It's not really a form but it can sometimes feel overwhelming. It's sort of a similar kind of task where you have to respond in some way and
00:17:08
Speaker
I might provide some detail, but yes, all of those kinds of things that come in, I think, all right, here's a birthday, put it in the calendar, RSVP immediately, ask if they've got ideas for gifts, if there's something that the kid wants, they have in mind, just do it straight away.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that for my older child in particular, now that the birthday parties have tended to get smaller, as the friendship groups have probably been more solidified, we often tend to do a group present between all of the parents. So that also makes it a little bit easier, but I'm often on the, as soon as I've seen the invitation, I'll send the text or WhatsApp to the people who I know who'll be going and get on that straight away so that it can be done well ahead of time. That's a good idea.
00:17:53
Speaker
So I guess, staying on the school theme, what do you get school newsletters that get sent out regularly? So our school newsletter is also, it's actually a, it's a Google, like a website almost, so it's updated all the time, but you do get a notification every couple of weeks, electronically, that it's there. And again, that's one where I make sure that when I've read the email, I then write any dates that I need to in the calendar straight away. Have you still got a paper newsletter?
00:18:22
Speaker
I think they make one available. If you want one, you can go and get one from the office, but it's sent digitally by email and it's also available in our parent portal. So the parent portal is new this year. They still send it. It's just got teething problems, but essentially do the same kind of thing. I scan the newsletter, put any relevant dates into the shared calendar, and then I delete the email. So I know I've dealt with it.
00:18:46
Speaker
And the dates that I'm looking for are when there's sort of major projects or school closings or the holidays or excursions or incursions, or if there's any kind of special assemblies where I think I might turn out to assembly, I pull all those dates out and then I delete them because the school newsletter is always archived on the school portal on the website, so there's no need to keep that kind of thing. So do you have a class parent contact list?
00:19:10
Speaker
So I think this year's the first year that I haven't actually had one. I think there's been some sort of privacy carry on. But I have got them from prior years, both I used to actually have them in like a display book, because we used to get them in hard copy and then in the more, it just shows my age, doesn't it? In the more recent years, they've been emailed out.
00:19:33
Speaker
And I have saved quite a few of them now. I've actually added them into the shared drive because they do come in handy when you're trying to find a parent, particularly for a birthday party invitation or something like that. So I have got them. Do you still have the paper version, ma'am? Well, we had a similar thing. Like when the kid, when you got the class list, it was using the class list of all the kids who were in the class and then
00:19:56
Speaker
I basically share some details, but they don't do any of that any now. We don't even get a class list anymore. But this year I was the parent rep for my son's class and I asked the teacher to email a note to all the parents to ask if they'd like to join a WhatsApp group. And I just set up a Google form so that the email send a link to the Google form they could put in their email and consent. And then I set up a WhatsApp group so we could share info and ask questions and remind each other about important events and tasks.
00:20:26
Speaker
And that's been really helpful, I think especially for the prep classes where there's parents who have their first kid going to school and just getting into the whole rhythm of the school scene takes a full year as well. So having that work that group I think has been particularly useful for them. I don't know if we'll end up pursuing one for the future.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it must be a dream parent rep who sent out a Google form. I don't think anyone else is, you know, that's sort of next level, ma'am. But I think that the WhatsApp group is a great idea if you can get enough parents to join. And I think that over time, when people find out about it, they want to get in on the action. Yeah, well, it's been great. Sometimes if someone's running late for pickup, I just pop a note saying, can someone just hang out with my kid for five minutes because I'm running late? Then, you know, I'm thinking about whether for
00:21:14
Speaker
Christmas, whether we'll do a group present for the teacher and we can approach people using that forum to see if there's interest in that kind of thing. What about school holidays? That's also a massive amount of admin. But if we don't have a parent that's going to be, well, even if you are at home with them, you can't be at home alone with them for two weeks at a time, unless everyone wants to go crazy.
00:21:38
Speaker
What kind of planning do you have to do around school holidays? I actually have almost, I'm thinking about school holidays at the beginning of the year when I'm sort of trading off where we're going to have our actual holidays away and thinking about how to mix that in with school holidays. So I think it's really important to think about it in advance. I also think it's really important to sort of develop relationships with other parents who might be in a similar
00:22:03
Speaker
boat to you is where the kids get along because I think that if you can do some trading in terms of having someone else's kids for a day here or there it's not the solution for the whole school holidays but often that's a really good thing to almost plan around because if you know that you've got a friend who doesn't work Wednesdays and you don't work Fridays and you can trade those off then you think okay well I've only got three days of the school holidays to sort out and I think it's important to you know have that mix of
00:22:31
Speaker
having some time at home, doing some school holiday programs, maybe hanging out with other family members and all of that is complicated and so it does take quite a bit of planning. This is the itinerary for your holiday this time around. Monday you'll be doing this and Tuesday you'll be doing this. It can be a lot of logistics and there's so many holiday programs out there now. I feel like in the last few years
00:22:58
Speaker
they've sort of blossomed. We used to rely on the one that was run at the school, but now there's things that sort of dance and drama. There's all sorts of STEM activities and horse riding and circus arts and code camp. And there's a new website, schoolholidaysprograms.com.au, which is one of those ones where I stumbled across it. I'm like, ah, good thinking about time. And they have, it's sort of like a marketplace where different holiday program providers can advertise and you can link through and book.
Managing School Holidays
00:23:28
Speaker
from that site but the showcase of what's out there is quite amazing. But as soon as I start making that plan I'm putting it in the shared calendar straight away so I've got the school holidays marked in already and I'm already writing in the top of every day like which kid is going
00:23:44
Speaker
what's the plan and then it's really easy to quickly see where the gaps still remain and where I've got to try and figure out a plan for one child or both for that particular day. So putting that in there and then also handing some of that responsibility to my partner to say, well, look, I've sorted out seven of the 10 days. Can you make a plan for the following year for the remaining three? And it's very easy then for him to be able to know which days he's trying to sort out. Yeah, you have really touched on extracurricular activities.
00:24:12
Speaker
There's the form-filling aspect of that, I guess, and then the shared calendar aspect of it. So setting up some kind of recurring activity if it's required and putting all the related info into the event. So if you need a reminder of what's the coach's name or, you know, is there a link to some kind of fixture so we can check what court we're on today? And then I toss all the paperwork that's related to them. Do you share drop-offs and pick-ups with other parents for your extracurricular stuff?
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, I have in the past in particular, and so I think that having a roster, we actually had a group of parents where when the kids did a drama class that was particularly long distance away, we actually created at the beginning of each term like an Excel roster of who was going to do what days, and then I could put it into my calendar right at the beginning of the term because I knew what responsibility I had.
00:25:03
Speaker
that definitely made a big difference. I think lots of sporting clubs, community sporting clubs now use apps as well. So I've got two of those now on my phone because unfortunately the two clubs use two different apps. I think team app and team stuff.
00:25:19
Speaker
do seem to be the two that are the most popular and they are really useful if you do happen to get dogged into being the team manager. I'm team manager for my daughter's netfall team. We just have a WhatsApp group because everybody already had WhatsApp so we just started a group where we can share details on rosters and playing positions and fixtures and that kind of thing which has been useful.
00:25:42
Speaker
I'm curious about the dedicated sports team apps that are out there. Yeah, so they are particularly useful to allocate responsibilities to people where there's more than one responsibility. So for some sports, there's someone who has to bring the oranges or bring the snacks, plus someone who has to score, plus someone who might even have to referee or whatever. And it also is really useful as the team
00:26:08
Speaker
you know if you're going to be short on players. Oh, that is useful. And so therefore, whether as the team manager, you need to go and have a look for other players. And you can also use it to put in if you're interested, particularly as the kids get older, what the score was from the game. And some of them even allow you to put in photos so that you can get a couple of photos. It's a great way to be able to share it.
00:26:30
Speaker
The one downside of the app that I find is that then that's not in my calendar, sort of it's another place to look. So I do really put, make the effort to kind of, and the game time's often changing week on week, but I do make the effort to add the game time to our shared calendar just because then I do find it makes planning our weekends that much easier when you can look at a glance and see everything in there. Otherwise there's a risk that you overbook yourself or double book.
00:26:58
Speaker
over the same time as the game. Yeah, we dipped our toe into the water of team sports this year. And thankfully, my daughter's game is at the same location at the same time every week. I will graduate to the model where it's at a different location at a different time every week. And I think that's where the apps become more useful because then people can look and they've got one place to look crazy and think in a WhatsApp group that could easily get lost. Yeah, the things we do for our children. Yep.
00:27:27
Speaker
So speaking of that, have we talked about their social lives in general? Did we talk about that already? No, we haven't. I must admit it's probably a lot of priority list. Are you kind of more reactive or proactive in terms of planning play dates and stuff? Do you plan in advance or it's more of a spontaneous thing?
00:27:47
Speaker
So I really try not to plan play dates too far in advance. I kind of resist it, knowing that we have a pretty complicated life already with full-time working parents and quite a few extracurricular activities. So really, and I want to have my own social life as a priority. It's kind of, if we get to a weekend and there's lots of empty space or a particular evening after school,
00:28:11
Speaker
or in the school holidays than I might, but it does tend to be much more very closer to the time. And I do tend to try and actually pick up the phone rather than text because then you're more likely to grab the person in that sort of spontaneous. But I am quite lucky now, my daughter's nearly 13. She's now organizing her own social life. She'll even walk to her friend's houses in that neighborhood. So I think that, you know, we're on the other side of getting close to the other side. And what about you, Mia?
00:28:42
Speaker
Oh, I was very much mostly spontaneous, so it might be, you know, we're doing drop off or pick up at school and someone was like, can someone still come over after school today? And I'll be, yep, or not, depending on if we've got stuff on or energy levels. And yeah, I don't think we organise much more than a week out if someone really wants to come over, but we can't make it happen on that day. It's not really about social life, but I do think it's a big area of admin, which is actually
00:29:10
Speaker
organizing their birthday parties every year. Yeah, oh, huge admin.
Planning Celebrations Efficiently
00:29:15
Speaker
It's a vet management. Well, it can be a vet management, and I guess it's up to you to decide how much of an event it's going to be. You're willing and you want to, how much pleasure you get out of it and how much pleasure your kids might get out of it. I do think it's one of those things that if, for example, making a really complicated birthday cake
00:29:36
Speaker
is a thing that's really important to you and that's fun but what you really need to do is to think about where that's going to fit in your schedule to make the time. Schedule it in I guess is my advice so that it doesn't become really stressful and make the time and if it's not that important to you then just go and buy one. Absolutely. I have a checklist for this. I have a list, a reference list
00:30:02
Speaker
for organizing birthdays and there's a discussion about the food that we want. We're having a little party, you know, regardless of whether it's just family or friends are coming over or whatever we're doing. If it's going to be something at home, we have a talk about what food the kids want and it's the usual crap and that's fine.
00:30:20
Speaker
My husband usually does, or he has done every single birthday cake. He loves making ridiculously complicated cakes and he's very good at it. I buy cupcakes for him to take to school. I don't even bake the cupcakes. Woolworths has a wonderful array of those little packs. It's got like 24 or something cupcakes in it. It's made specifically, I think, for kids to take to school. They're little mini cakes and there's chocolate strawberry vanilla.
00:30:48
Speaker
And that's what my kids get every year to take to school if they want to take something to school. And then it's just a matter of organizing like an invitation list and managing the RSVPs, which I usually do on a note in my app. So the notes app on my phone, I set up a little table with who I need to get an RSVP from and a little column for whether they've got back to me or not. And
00:31:14
Speaker
I think we've always had paper invitations because the kids love actually handing them out and taking them home as opposed to digital ones. It's sort of harder for them to participate if it's a digital thing. Literally just bought those ones from the supermarket, those supermarket packs, or we've made them, or I found something online and just downloaded a template and you fill it out and print it off at home.
00:31:37
Speaker
There's so many options for that kind of stuff now. But you just organised your kid's birthdays recently. How long did it take you to pull it all together? So I think I organised...
00:31:48
Speaker
Well, I think I organized my son's birthday party in under 30 minutes. He was really clear where he wanted to go. He wanted an outsource. I was willing to pay for it. And so actually a lot of these external venues now, you don't even have to phone. You can book a party online, on their website, print out the invitations that they provide. I got him to write the invitations, but I actually did take a photo of an invitation and emailed it.
00:32:16
Speaker
And so this invitation is coming home, but I happen to know that the cohort of kids perhaps might not be
00:32:27
Speaker
double invitation. Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. And then that also meant I got some RSVPs back pretty quickly because they weren't lost at the bottom of a school bag for some time. I saw some of our own one the other day that was torn in half and inconveniently the bit that told me whose party it was was the bit that was missing. That was a bit embarrassing.
00:32:48
Speaker
And my daughter left one in her pocket and went through the wash. So I think that it can be a bit tricky. Yeah. So when, when do you do all of this admin dialogue? Well, I think when you go through all of this admin and you realize how much there is, and I think, you know, this episode has shown how much admin can be related to your children.
Streamlining Life Admin Tasks
00:33:08
Speaker
There is no one that we sometimes feel like an assistant to our children.
00:33:13
Speaker
I do think that the key is to set up the systems so that you can do as much of it as possible as soon as it touches you. And so then it becomes two minutes here, two minutes there, two minutes here. On the go, if you see the email and you're standing in the line at the supermarket, ideally you can actually finish the task while you're waiting for the checkout.
00:33:36
Speaker
I just can't reiterate enough how transformative it's been to have all the systems so that I can do it as it comes in rather than having to store it up and try and remember it in my mind. Yeah, totally agree. Make use of that shared calendar, making sure that the details go in there as soon as you get them.
00:33:53
Speaker
having that form-filling data and the password manager on hand at all times and just keep pumping out those to-do lists, adding those to-do lists or those reference lists so that when you're doing those repetitive tasks you've got something to refer to to make it faster. Alright, that wraps us up with the kid Adam in. Diana, have you got a life admin high of the week?
00:34:14
Speaker
I think I've already talked about the one birthday party that I organised recently, but I also organised another birthday party, so both of my kids are having parties in the next two weeks. Why did you have your children so close together? They're not that close together, it's just we're having the parties out of sequence because we're going to be away when one of them has their birthday.
00:34:39
Speaker
So for the other one I've organised a scavenger hunt. So really inexpensive and I just came up with the idea, I don't even know how, and I googled it and found hundreds upon thousands of samples scavenger hunt lists. That's music to my ears because the idea of having to come up with clues would paralyse me.
00:34:59
Speaker
So what did you find? So I found loads of different lists, particularly for her age, which is the tweeny kind of age. I copied a few and then I took some ideas, some inspiration, went for a walk around the neighborhood, quickly put together the list and really excited that it's going to be a really fun party, a bit different. And actually, you know, it didn't feel overwhelming. It felt kind of fun and easy to do. So I felt like fun admin instead of tedious admin. That's nice to hear because
00:35:29
Speaker
You know, having something like a scavenger hunt, I would assume that it was going to take a lot of planning and hard work. And even though it would be something I'd like to do for my kid, I think I'd find it too daunting. So I'm glad to hear you found resources that just made it so simple. Mia, did you have a hide-a-seek? I did. It sounds a little bit more boring than a scavenger hunt. But I just kicked some goals with my super evaluation. So I have started a new job in the last few months and I just got put on the default
00:35:58
Speaker
super plan and the default super provider. And conveniently you can have appointments with the super advisor on site. And so I set up this little appointment and just got the whole thing set up within that time. So we were able to set up my online account in the session and pull the details directly into my password manager.
00:36:20
Speaker
I was able to make all sorts of decisions about my new plan and the allocations and finding details from previous Superfunds to roll over into this one because I had all of the information accessible through my password manager and through my online apps.
00:36:37
Speaker
So it was just really efficient. It was so nice to just walk in thinking I need to get this totally dealt with and off my to-do list and walked out with it done with no like homework to follow up on. When you can do finish a task from beginning to end in one visit, it does feel really satisfying. And how about life admin low? I think I've talked a little bit already about this trip that we've got planned towards the end of the year and we have to get some visas for this trip.
00:37:06
Speaker
And so I sat down thinking, I've got 10 minutes. I'm going to quickly apply for visas for the four of us, thinking all the information's here in my password manager, but the forms are so long. They wouldn't easily fill in the data from the password manager. So it's not going to be a 10 minute task. It's going to be a much longer task.
00:37:27
Speaker
So I really need to schedule some time in my calendar when I've got more time so I can finish it all off in one go rather than trying to do it in bits and pieces. So a bit frustrating because I had thought that I would be able to do it much easier. What kinds of questions am I asking you? All the previous travel. Previous addresses and all sorts of information that just felt really overwhelming and challenging. Yeah. I was like, okay, well. Are we worth it when you're on holiday? Are we worth it?
00:37:54
Speaker
So Mayor, what about a power tool? Have you got one this time? Yeah, I've been playing around with the iOS Shortcuts app, which is a little app that I noticed magically appear on my phone. One of the last Apple updates apparently arrived with iOS 12, but I just did mine to 13. I'm like, what's that on this screen? Anyway, the Shortcuts app allows you to set up automatic sequences on your phone according to the criteria you put in.
00:38:22
Speaker
So for example, you can set up a little automation where after you turn your alarm off in the morning, the weather app will automatically open. And when you close that the Google maps app can automatically open and show you how long your commute to work is going to be. So you can nominate these sequences and tell it after I've done this, open this app, make the phone vibrate or turn it off or whatever you like. One of the tabs in the app is a gallery with all sorts of suggestions.
00:38:49
Speaker
I have things like you get, there's like a teeth brushing one where automatically it'll do a little timer for two minutes and then it vibrates at 60 seconds. There's ones where you can log your water or your caffeine or your weight. There's like a one tap, get me home directions thing using the Apple maps. One that I particularly liked was about letting people know you're running late in one tap. So.
00:39:15
Speaker
it will automatically message all the people who are on the calendar invite, on the calendar event. It'll automatically message them all, telling you them that you're running late and they'll actually calculate the travel time using Apple Maps. So it'll tell you when you're going to be there, which is really brilliant. Yeah, that's really cool. I think there's been an app around for a while that's called If This Then That.
00:39:43
Speaker
I think that I have played around with in the past. It does something similar, but I'm sure that the Apple one will be way easier to use. I guess it's talking to the native apps and once you introduce quite seamlessly. There's also a files app.
00:39:59
Speaker
which I also hadn't noticed. This came from iOS 13 and I was pleased to discover that this lets you search and look at files on your phone from different apps, but it also lets you scan file or scan a document and upload it to any cloud storage you might have. So even though I've got the Google drive app on my phone, I can only take a photo with that. I can't actually scan it and take a PDF, but now I can use the files app.
00:40:26
Speaker
and I can take the photo or scan it and it'll turn it into a PDF and upload it to Google Drive for me. So that was useful to discover.
00:40:35
Speaker
That's really handy. Before we do our outro, I just want to thank our listeners for staying on the journey with us through into season three. Or if you're a new listener, welcome. Hello. We're very glad to have you on board. And I would love to encourage everyone to please leave us a review in iTunes specifically or whatever platform you're using to listen to your podcast. It means so much to us.
00:41:00
Speaker
if we could get some feedback about how the podcast is going, but also the reviews make it visible to other people. So at the moment we have one or two reviews. We have a couple of ratings, but we only have one or two actual reviews and we know that there are hundreds of you listening from all over the world. So we would love it if you could spend two minutes, write a review and help other people find life admin life hacks.
00:41:24
Speaker
Thanks, Mayor. We hope this episode has given you some tips on managing your kid admin. Our top tips are spend some time setting up your foundation life admin systems that will make ongoing admin easier. Think about setting up a launch pad for school bags. Have a weekly schedule visible for your kids.
00:41:44
Speaker
and make sure you store all your data in your password manager to make form filling easier. Do as much of this admin in the moment, action emails when they arrive, fill out forms and respond to birthday party invitations as soon as you find them. And finally, set up a keepsake system that works for you and file as you go.
00:42:06
Speaker
If you'd like to join us on our life admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, life admin life hacks to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing and feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at life admin lifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app.