…how people with full-time jobs are supposed to keep up with all the admin needed to hang on to daily life? I sometimes feel it’s a day’s work just to be an adult, own a car and live in a house, even before you get round to cleaning it or cooking dinner. In the last couple of weeks we have: imported the car (two trips, two hours each); insured the car; taxed the car; changed Ken’s license (two trips); got a new battery for the car; insured the house contents; and for the second time made a special trip to get a form stamped to confirm to the Child Benefit people that I do indeed have a job in Ireland. This week we have the car’s NCT, Frank’s two months immunization, registering the family with a new doctor, and Hugh’s developmental test. If I were actually at work at the moment I’d be taking at least three half-days off. Here’s an idea to solve youth unemployment: why not assign each family a footloose eighteen-year-old to do all this tedious running about and waiting on hold to call centres? It would teach them responsibility and probably increase vocations to a life of celibate poverty to boot. I hear the religious orders have some recruitment problems at present.
Ken and Dot's Allsorts 
I know the feeling! There’s 24 hours in the day. 1 hour to get up and leave the house, 11 hours commuting/working, 8 hours sleeping (ok, that is ideal but its usually less), leaves 4 hours to cook, eat, wash up, clean and tidy, put washing on, do ironing, sew button back on coat, book holidays, sort new railcard, fill in insurance forms, go food shopping, go to the gym, socialise (hah!) etc. Last week I refused to go to the cinema because the film started at 9.30, which is far too late for me with getting up at 6.30. I simply cannot imagine having to add children into that mix – i would be in negative time, or simply never sleeping.
I love the idea.
I think we should also be allocated donkeys, for carrying things around on short journeys (esp. academics/books/campus, academics/food/shops). Thus helping donkey preservation.