As a wife and a mother, I started adding a price to my daily tasks. It was eye-opening to realize how much I do every day.

• Dads are more and more involved in their kids' lives.
• Yet it still feels like moms are doing all the heavy lifting around the house.

I currently have three hand-scribbled to-do lists on my desk. One is on scrap paper. It has bullet points itemizing what must get done today:

• Buy mozzarella, basil, and baguette to make subs with leftover eggplant parmesan
• Mail package to my agent
• Wash jersey before younger son's Ultimate Frisbee game

Another list, on a bigger sheet of paper, is for this entire week. Some highlights:

• Go to Bloomingdale's to look for dresses for my upcoming book tour
• Review notes from editor re: the new novel
• Remind husband to send in the application for the dump permit

And then I have the big kahuna — the Master List. On a legal pad, I've written down every nagging nugget that needs to get done in my busy life as an author, a mom of two sons, a wife, a daughter, and a friend. Oh, I just thought of another! My husband and I are throwing a party on the roof of our apartment building to celebrate our 20th anniversary:

• Figure out appetizers, wine, and napkins. Flowers for the tables. But what kind?

I do work as a mother, a wife, and also professionally

This trio of lists dominates my day as I juggle my creative work and all the work I do as a wife and mom.

I realize many might question the tasks I take on as a wife, and I hear you. Our society has come a long way, renegotiating the division of domestic labor along gender lines. Men take paternity leave now. Dads can cook healthy dinners. And yes, men fill out those endless camp forms. But guess what? Often their wives asked them to do it and told them the login for the camp portal.

As I researched my new novel, "The Wife App," I interviewed many women about their role in the family — and I learned that, like me, women often become the default cruise director for the family (signing kids up for sports, scoring movie tickets, planning the parties and playdates and vacations) while juggling the mental load (knowing what needs to get gone to make the ship sail, recognizing there's no milk for the morning). And then there's the physical load — sorting through summer clothes, returning Amazon orders, running out, and buying the milk. Or women might delegate the grocery run to someone else — but they are still the ones scanning the fridge to make sure breakfast is set for tomorrow.

Women often do all this while toiling away at our actual paid work. This domestic stuff is actual work. In my fictional world of "The Wife App," I showed women getting paid for the items that wives cross off their to-do lists. But what if fiction became reality? What if I got paid for my mental load and physical labor? How much would I make today?

I added a price to my daily tasks

It's 9 am and I take our dog for a 30-minute walk in Riverside Park. According to ruffcity.com, a half-hour private dog walk in New York City costs $24. While I'm walking Maple, I place a call to the vet because she's been chewing her paw. Ten minutes later, a vet tech instructs me to order a bitter orange cream for her "hot spot." I quickly hop onto Amazon and place the order — total time: 15 minutes. In New York City, an admin makes about $40 an hour. So for this 1/4 of an hour, I'll take $10.

As the dog and I circle toward home, I remember I need to set up an eye exam for my older son. I call the optometrist — 11 minutes of scheduling and verifying our health insurance. For this fraction of an hour, I'll take $7. Now I'm triple-dripping, but what wife doesn't do three things at once?

When I get in the door, I toss in a quick load of laundry — including my son's Frisbee jersey — and fold a few loads I ran off when I first woke up. The dry cleaner in my neighborhood charges $3 for a pound of laundry. I've done three loads, approximately eight pounds each. I'll take $72, thanks.

Before I hit my desk, I quickly prep some food for dinner. We're having leftovers, but I make a kale salad and roll meatballs for my kid, who hates eggplant parmesan. HelloFresh.com charges $155 for four meals for four people. Divide that by four, and I'm getting $38.75 for tonight's dinner.

I glance at the clock. It's not even 11 am. My brain is zapped — and I haven't even reviewed the notes my editor gave me. Not to mention that I've added three more items to my to-do list, and, yep, we're out of milk.

Did it help to get "pretend paid"? Not really. I mean, who's going to give me this compensation? My husband and I share an account, so I'd essentially transfer money from me to me. Thinking about my husband, I grab my phone and call him at his office.

"The roof party," I say to him.

"Yes," he says, "it's coming up."

True. In two weeks, we are having sixteen friends over to celebrate our birthdays, our anniversary, and summer.

"Can you do it all?" I ask. "Take on the food, the flowers, the wine. The whole thing."

"Of course," he said. "Want me to run it by you? The menus and all that?"

"Hmmm," I say. "No, actually. You can have this one."

"You said flowers?" he asks. "Did you have a specific kind in mind?"

I think about daisies. I love daisies. I carried a bouquet of them the day I got married.

"Anything is fine," I tell him. Part of sharing the load is letting go of how it's done.

When we hang up, I cross "roof party" off of my Master List and put it out of my mind. The cost of this? Priceless.

Carolyn Mackler is the acclaimed author of the YA novels "The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things," "Infinite in Between," and "The Future of Us," among others. Her award-winning novels have appeared on bestseller lists and have been translated into more than 25 languages. Carolyn lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. "The Wife App" is her first novel for adults.