Many mystery shoppers will use the transition over New Years Day to really clean house, so to speak, with their paperwork, financial information, and more related to their mystery shopping job. They will clear out the clutter from the prior year’s assignments and file, shred, and sort as necessary to start the year with a clean slate. Yet as the year progresses, even the most organized of mystery shoppers will start to notice clutter creeping back into their work area. So this time of year is ideal for spring cleaning, and organizing now can prepare you for several more months of organized, hassle-free mystery shopping. Here are some tips to help make spring cleaning an easier chore for you:
Sort Your Papers. If your desk or work area looks like many other mystery shoppers, you no doubt have a huge pile of papers that you have been meaning to file away or shred. Other papers may be for assignments that are still in the works. As a first step to getting re-organized, take time to go through these papers. Make stacks of items that need to be shredded, filed away for the end-of-year accounting, or kept readily available for pending assignments.
Clear Your Desk. Don’t stop at just organizing your big stack of papers into several smaller stacks. Next make that extra effort to actually put these papers where they need to go. Grab your paper shredder and go to town clearing out those papers you don’t need anymore. Buy a box of file folders and file away those papers you need for your end of year accounting. Then create another file folder for those assignments that are still pending. This file folder can help you to continue to stay organized.
Set Up Organization Methods. If you are shocked or even dismayed at how messy your desk or work area has gotten in just those few months since your last big cleaning job, you likely need to take some time now to set up an organization method that will prevent this clutter from developing in the future. For some people, this is as simple as labeling a few file folders for papers you are keeping for tax purposes and those for pending assignments. It’s also a good idea to keep the shredder handy so you can shred those papers right away. There really is no point in creating a huge pile of paperwork to shred when you can take care of that task with just a minute of your time here and there.
Check Your Progress. Spring cleaning is a great time to take a hard look at your efforts up to this point in the year. Think about things like if you have been keeping all of your receipts for expenses that could be written off at the end of the year, if you have been keeping a log of your business miles traveled, and so forth. Now is the perfect time to make some mid-year changes if you haven’t been doing everything you really need to be doing in your job as a mystery shopper.
Keep these tips in mind as you do some much-needed mystery shopping spring cleaning in the coming weeks!
This is an excellent piece on getting out the clutter. I will get to work on my own organizing with some much-needed tips.
Should be a good time to maybe shed some of the shopping companies that may not offer too many opportunities for you or are slow payers. You may spend too much time searching for jobs and not enough time shopping. Time to manage your time management skills, especially with the cost of gas.