[Neo]

Once you get the hang of it you're pretty much on autopilot with regards to taking care of their needs. Sims are fairly self-sufficient anyway. Left to their own devices they do a decent job of taking care of themselves assuming they're not trapped in disfunctional relationships or have a crappy house layout. There are tricks you can do like build staircases as two together to avoid traffic jams.

The one thing sims will not do on their own is pay bills. For that reason you can only leave them alone so long before the bank repossess the fridge and your sims starve. I once left a family running overnight and the next morning half the furniture was gone and one of the sims was missing. There was no tombstone or anything to indicate he had died. I still don't know what happened to him.