The Mystery Shop Maven

Depending what part of the country you live in, you may still be gripped by harsh winter weather or you may already be thinking about planting your spring garden. Regardless of the weather outside, now is a great time for spring cleaning inside! If you were too busy with the hustle and bustle of the holidays to prepare for the new year, seize the moment to clear the clutter and prepare for many mystery shopping assignments yet to come!

Clear Away The Old! Take a good hard look at your desk or work area. You may not have noticed the clutter before. I bet you probably know exactly where everything you need is on that desk. But if it’s an eyesore for the rest of your household or if you are prone to misplacing or losing items on that desk, take some time to clear out the old papers.

For tax purposes, you really need to keep all of the paperwork for each year together. So now is a great time to box up any 2008 paperwork you have floating around your desk. Gather it all together and store it away. That year is long gone!

Prepare For the New! With some luck and determination, you will be swamped with mystery shopping assignments in 2009. And with assignments comes a lot of paperwork. If your organizational system was lacking last year, now is the ideal time to fine-tune your old system and create a new and improved system that works for you. It’s better to re-organize your desk and files now before you have half a year’s worth of assignments floating around on your desk again!

If you need to purchase some hanging folders, a file organizer, or even a file cabinet, there’s no better time than the present.

Don’t Forget The Computer! In all likelihood, you’ve stored quite a bit of information for 2008’s mystery shopping assignments on your hard drive. If you haven’t already done so, create a new folder for “Mystery Shopping 2008” and drag and drop all of your files into that folder. If you need to clean up and organize your 2008 digital files more than that, now is the perfect time. Yet just creating a big catch-all folder for 2008 will do wonders for preparing you for 2009.

Then create another folder on your computer for 2009, and use this for all of your new assignments. After you’ve done this, don’t forget to back up your system if you haven’t done it in awhile.

Time For New Equipment! Take a good hard look at the equipment you’ve been using for mystery shopping, such as your computer, printer, fax machine, and scanner. If your desk is bogged down with a separate machine for each function, you may want to consider consolidating into a single multi-function machine that can perform all of the functions you need. Or if your fax machine or printer are a decade old and print insanely slow, you may want to consider modernizing your equipment to save yourself some time. Remember to look for energy-efficient models to save yourself some utility costs if you do purchase new. Also, any equipment purchases made for business purposes can be written off on your tax returns, so save your receipt!

Taking some time to clean off your desk, organize your hard drive, and even spruce up  your equipment can breathe some much-needed fresh air into mystery shopping for you!