How does it take you that long to donate items? Do you hand them to Blathers one by one? You can pick multiple items at once and he'll be surprised that there's several things.
For me, collecting fossils is a bit annoying since you need to get them assessed first, but it's not a big deal. There's only a limited number of them per day and you can keep repeats to get the miniature models from Cyrus.
The artwork isn't that bad, since Redd shows up once a week and the villagers only give you paintings sometimes. I don't understand what your difficulty with Redd is? Do you have a hard time figuring out which piece of artwork is the genuine one? Are you having trouble finding him in your town?
The bugs and fish are a bit more work, but I think it's neat to do that. I was much more obsessed with collecting all of them when I started but when I'm bored, I'll take the time to find the ones I don't have yet. I really want to finish those museum rooms soon, since I really like their design and I enjoy looking at the animals there and reading the snippets of text.
Maybe it'll be easier if you don't think of it as a chore, but just as something you can do to unlock things or to make your game more complete. If you're spending a long time every day trying to find bugs and fish, of course it's going to be annoying after a while (unless you really love collecting things), so you can just do it for short periods of time when you feel like it. If you don't even enjoy collecting things and don't want the perks that come with that (like badges or a complete museum), then don't, or just take a break.
