I never had more time than living alone. Having a spouse and 2 kids is mayhem.

The kids make the things you mentioned impossible. I'm up an hour before them to get the day going. Then it's getting everyone together to get to work and daycare. Pick up kids from daycare after work, cook/have dinner, a little down time (like 30-60 minutes tops) which is spent with my kids, then it's baths and bed time routine for both of them. At this point, it is somewhere between 8 and 9, depending on how bedtime went and you haven't even cleaned up dinner or their lunch stuff. Now you can't leave your kids alone in the house, so you can't run any errands.

If you have practice or activities after daycare, push everything back another hour or 2.

It's a lot to do, which is how I dont understand how single parents do it every single day. I can handle it for a week, but a lot of routine chores don't happen. Things like a load of laundry goes in at 10p and I pass out and it sits wet until the next day.

I also live alone, and my kids are grown up and gone.

I came to feel that "It's not worth it to cook for just one person" was a pretty lame excuse to eat frozen food and other garbage.

I'm trying to cook more stuff I can freeze or at least store for a few days.

Still pretty lazy though.

I do not have children but that is a dramatically out of touch perception of parenthood

If that's a big issue you can always save some from last week and alternate.