Verity Tuck’s created a solution to help her carry her overwhelming mother ‘load’, the Goldee app

Entrepreneur Verity Tuck thought life would be simpler when her daughter started school. She was wrong. Now, she’s created a solution to help her carry her overwhelming mother ‘load’.

Entrepreneur Verity Tuck with her husband, Mike Fraser, and children Gracie and Monty. Picture: Supplied

Before her daughter started school, Verity Tuck thought finely tuned organisational skills were her “thing”. The accomplished entrepreneur’s careful planning and eye for detail helped her build an online empire that she later sold for $35m.

But when her daughter started school three years ago, the relentless tidal wave of daily duties, WhatsApp messages, tasks and reminders left the mum of two feeling like she was “drowning” – and desperately needing a solution to deal with the overwhelming mother “load”.

“I think I thought naively life might be simpler with Gracie in the one place but what I found was an absolute delta and abundance of school emails, reminders, WhatsApp messages, requests, donations, orange clothes on Harmony Day, birthday invites – there were more than 20 parties in the first year,” says Tuck, who was in the grip of a covid-inspired boom for her same-day flower and gift service LVLY when Gracie started primary school.

Entrepreneur Verity Tuck with her husband, Mike Fraser, and children Gracie and Monty. Picture: Supplied

“It was actually so much more complicated. I was shocked. I’m quite an organised person but then to feel always on the back foot – which day was the reader supposed to go back, library bags, swimming weeks. You had to be across so many things; it felt like you were drowning. And that’s just one child in prep.”

Tuck knows she’s not alone. Research from the US shows 71 per cent of all mums are overwhelmed by the mental and physical burden of running their everyday lives.

“I thought ‘surely someone knows a hack for this; there has to be hacks’ but there wasn’t any other than ‘turn off WhatsApp’, and I was like ‘I don’t know if that’s the right move’,” says the 42-year-old entrepreneur, who committed herself to finding a solution that will help parents tackle their heavy demands.

Entrepreneur Verity Tuck with her husband, Mike Fraser, and children Gracie and Monty. Picture: Supplied

Together with husband Mike Fraser, she has created Goldee, an app that helps parents “deal with the emotional load of every day”.

With five-year-old Monty now joining his big sister at school and double the already-overwhelming influx of things to organise, Tuck says Goldee – which uses AI to scan information, sort it and then allocate tasks – has already “saved my life so many times”.

“Getting all those little things out of my brain has been a game changer for me,” says Tuck, who lives at Cabarita on the NSW far north coast. “It adds a level of satisfaction to feel like you are on top of things. It relieves mothers of the burden of holding on to it in their brains.”

Goldee wasn’t ready in time to stop Tuck’s household chaos from hitting its zenith a year ago, when she forgot to return a permission slip for Monty and he was the only preschooler left behind as his classmates headed off on an excursion.

“That was a very sad day for him,” Tuck says. “It’s not only the remembering of everything to do with the kids but the stress of ‘what if we don’t remember’ for our children.”

Adelaide mum Sandra Senn knows the mortification of missing an important school note. Her eight-year-old daughter, Murphy, has turned up to school as the only kid in uniform on casual days.

Sandra Senn poacks lunch boxes with her children, Murphy, 8 and six-year-old Garrison as their dog, Beau, watches on. Picture: Russell Millard Photography

She’s also forgotten to pack swimmers for six-year-old Garrison’s school swimming lessons. “He had to miss out,” says the 41-year-old, who runs support service Business Mums Hub and lives in Athelstone.

“I’m trying to remember too much for one person. I’m not a details person. I knew I would never be the Stepford mum; that’s not who I am. I’ve always been chaotic but I’ve always survived and kept up with it.”

Yorke Peninsula mum oftwo Bridget Johns has made it her business to tackle the mother load for her stressed-out clients.

The 42-year-old runs organisational coaching service Be Simply Free, which helps her clients in Australia, New Zealand and the UK “declutter their homes, calendars and minds so they’ve got more time to collect moments, not things”.

Last September, she surveyed 318 of her clients and found that 89 per cent were feeling overwhelmed by their mental load.

“I think people are becoming more aware of it,” says Johns, who lives on a cattle and broadacre cropping property at Alford with her farmer husband, Stewart, who is also an Elvis impersonator.

Yorke Peninsula mum-of-two and businesswoman Bridget Johns. Picture: Supplied

“The resentment is building that a lot of the time it’s the mums that are carrying that mental load. It’s that unseen work that mums are doing ... all that thinking, that takes a long time.”

Johns lives in an area with traditional views and values but says her husband has been happy to support in sharing the load.

A video of him hand washing his expensive bespoke Elvis costume in the bath – which his wife has captioned the “opposite of weaponised incompetence” – has been viewed more than 300,000 times on Instagram.

“If he can do this (share the load), any man can,” Johns says.

“I had traditionally always done the mopping in our house, and I was like ‘I am over this; you have to do the mopping’.

“He did it for about six months and then he realised how crap it was, and he was the one who organised us to get a cleaner. Some of his mates send him messages of them doing the mopping and sweeping – their wives had seen my social media stories. It’s opening up the conversation.”

Johns says she reached her own crisis point in 2015 when she returned to work as a program manager with the education department after having her second child.

She found her mental health was suffering under the weight of too many responsibilities.

“I realised I couldn’t do it all and I needed to involve my family but also my work,” Johns says. “When I found myself being overwhelmed by too much stuff, it was starting that communication, talking to my farmer husband and then us working together to divide and conquer, working together to split some of the mental and physical tasks up.

“As our kids have got older – they’re 11 and 13 – we involve them more and they have to think of one meal they’re making a week.

“I’m really conscious of making sure there’s no pink or blue roles in my house. My daughter can mow the lawn. Both kids can do everything in the household. I don’t want my daughter to be the default mental load holder.”

Both Johns and Sennare keen to get their hands on Tuck’s Goldee app, which draws in information from sources including photographs, emails, diary entries and screenshots to create a schedule. It can also assign tasks to different caregivers, including partners, babysitters or grandparents.

“I’m definitely going to give it a go and share the results with my community,” Johns says. “It’s another way to simplify life. Using technology, using people around you, being able to say no – these are the tools we have.”

The app, which officially launched in June, is available as part of a six-month free trial. After that, it is $8.99 a month.

Tuck says a survey of users shows Goldee has saved them an average of four hours a week.

“Our mission is to give back to busy parents the gift of time and peace of mind and the ability to be present,” she says.

“It solves the problem of how to create more space to be present for the children. We want to bring the joy back for mums.” â– 

Originally published as Verity Tuck’s created a solution to help her carry her overwhelming mother ‘load’, the Goldee app