How we estimate

What the hours include

Every job in the assessment is made up of four kinds of work, and we count all of them:

• Doing: the hands-on part, like cooking, the school run or the laundry.
• Noticing, planning and researching: spotting what's needed, deciding, booking, remembering.
• Caring: the emotional side, like comforting, keeping the peace or worrying about someone.
• Owning and following up: making sure it happens, checking how it went and planning next time.

The mix is different for every job. The school run is almost all doing; buying a birthday present is mostly noticing, researching and deciding. Some of the thinking happens at the same time as other jobs (planning dinner on the school run), so the total doesn't all take a separate block of time.

Where the numbers come from

Each job starts from a researched estimate of how often it happens and how long it takes, for a reference home of two adults and two children. We then scale it to your answers: the number and ages of children, where they spend their days, whether you rent, your car, garden and pets, and how much care you give a relative. Younger children add more hands-on time; extra people add less than the first, because a lot of household work is shared.

We checked the totals against UK time-use research. The Office for National Statistics found adults do about 2 hours 43 minutes to 3 hours 37 minutes of unpaid work a day (autumn 2023). Our hands-on hours sit sensibly against that, with families with young children higher, as you'd expect.

What childcare covers

Children's daily care counts all the time the children are in your care and awake, outside school or childcare: getting ready, mealtimes with them, the school run, play, bath and bed, and being on duty while you do other things. Homework, clubs and cooking have their own jobs.

That's more than time-use diaries record, because diaries only count childcare when it's the main thing you're doing. Parents of under-12s in the UK spend about 27 hours a week on childcare as their main activity (University of Essex), and much more with the children around while doing something else. We count the full time you're responsible for them, because that's how it feels to carry it.

How we work out paid help

For each job we ask whether you could pay someone to take it on, which service would do it, and how much of the hands-on time it would cover. The thinking and caring can't be bought, so they're never priced.

• Professionals are usually quicker than a household, so they need fewer hours for the same job.
• Hours for the same service add up: a housekeeper's visit covers cleaning, then tidying, laundry and bins as the hours grow.
• Each service has a realistic minimum booking, because nobody hires a handyman for 20 minutes.
• Costs run from typical UK rates to London rates.

Prices from Nannytax (nanny pay 2025/26, plus about 15% employer costs), HaMuch (cleaners), TaskRabbit (handymen and gardeners), Rover (dog walkers), Home Instead and the Homecare Association (home care), Tiger Recruitment and PA Pool (personal assistants), Babysits and the Sutton Trust (babysitters and tutors), checked in October 2026.

The limits

These are estimates built from research and your answers, not a diary of your week. People tend to misjudge their own time, and the thinking work is hard to see, even for the person doing it. That's why the assessment shows ranges and asks whether the picture feels right.

If a number looks wrong for your home, we'd really like to know. Tell us what you thought of the assessment.