So, 3 months ago my wife and I were asked to participate in a Time User Survey, my wife was skeptical but I really wanted to try it. So we did.

The lady arrives and runs us thru the procedure of recording everything we did. It was an app (which made it much easier let me tell you) for our phones. The process was simple , easy and recorded things by using a 'start' and 'stop' button. When we would start a task , we simply did an +add task and -Stop Task.

She went over all the little things to keep in mind and then we got to ask questions. My first question was "Do I do a +start task when I get in my car to go to work or do I wait until I get to work", "No sorry, you don't start it until you get to work", 'hmmm, that doesn't make sense but oh well'. My wife then chimes in with 'so I assume then that when I go to get groceries I don't +start until I get to the store' "NO, driving to get groceries is part of the task', "Again, this doesn't make sense"

The lady also tells us that when doing laundry the entire process is part of the task, not just the loading and unloading, so if your machine takes 1/2 hour to wash a load, that is 1/2 hour of 'work' and the same with the dryer. Again this made no sense.

So off we go, we did it for just over 3 months and the best part for me was that we could not see the running totals until the end. So yesterday was the last day and I entered the code to stop the process and was presented with the results.

A simple total shows that my wife (who is a SAHW) does on average 2.2 less hours per day at 'work' than I do. This was shocking to her and then I pointed out that this number is on the low end when you consider you do 3 loads of laundry per week and get 'credit' for 4.5 hours of work when in reality you are only doing about .5 hours of work.

Has anyone ever done one of these.