I started Mystery Shopping in October of this year. I really like it but am having difficulties managing my time. I live in a small town, so I have to travel to the larger cities to perform my shops. By the time I mystery shop all day, come home and make dinner, take care of the kids, ect., I am exhausted by the time I get around to submitting my reports. I do a minimum of 5 shops each trip in order to make a profit. I don't even have time to sleep. Any suggestions to make it easier? I sure would hate to give it up. I am making good money and like what I do.

There are several possibilities that come to mind.

When I have too many shops or am arriving home tired and late I am likely to have 1) a dinner ready in the fridge to just slide in the oven (meatloaf, casserole etc.); 2) a dinner my significant other can cook (he has become Master of Sausage w/Peppers); 3) dinner brought in from my last shop or picked up on the way home. Shopping being a significant contributor to household financial maintenance, I am not about to take any backtalk about what is served.

Try to get out earlier so you arrive home earlier and possibly have time to enter a few reports, relax and spend time with the kids and then do the rest of your reports.

Focus on some companies that give you a 24 hour window for shop entry because I suspect you are not going out every day. If you can put off 2-3 shops to enter the following day then that should take a lot of pressure off of you.

Learn to relax in the car. If you are driving long distances the chances are that many of the miles are not intense driving. I mostly listen to classical music, mellow jazz or 'easy listening' in the car. My significant other insists on listening to talk radio and he is more tense and annoyed when he gets out of the car than when he got in.

If you are not doing meal shops, be sure to pack a sandwich and a thermos to save you the expense of lunch on the road and of time stopping for food and beverage. If you are skipping lunch, that alone is enough to have you tired and stressed by the time you get home.

Your suspicions are correct. I normally shop about 3 days a week. Thank you for the tips. I am going to try them out and let you know how they work for me. The thought of not cooking and having dinner already prepared will be a welcome relief. I stress on my way home because I am already thinking about what I am going to cook and trying to get home to get started. hanks again!

When my kids were young I was not mystery shopping but there were nights when either I was too exhausted to cook or was home late. Although freezer space is always limited, when I was making up something like lasagna, I would make one pan for dinner and one or two pans for the freezer. I would freeze in corning ware and then pop it out to wrap in plastic and seal in foil. Easy enough to unwrap, drop it back in a corning ware, allow it to thaw in the fridge during the day and throw in the oven when I got home. My kids were pretty awful about seeing the same dinner two nights in a row, so the freezer was my good friend.

I have been going through the same thing. I've made the slow cooker my best friend. It takes only 5-10 minutes to pop it all in, and when I get home, voila, diner!

I do the slow cooker thing as well. I have only two issues with it. First, everything tastes very similar regardless of what I put in the pot it seems and second, the formica laminate on my kitchen counters is over 30 years old and the slow steady heat of the slow cooker melted the old adhesive and the formica 'popped' up in the middle of the counter. I repeated the process with the slow cooker the next time on a metal cookie sheet to evenly spread the weight, let it soften the adhesive and then pulled the cooker off and loaded down the cookie sheet with weight to push the formica back into the glue. It has pretty much worked but these days the slow cooker goes on a wood cutting board on the counter.

That was some good thinking on your part to fix your counter top!

Have you considered investing in a tablet PC on which to enter reports while still on the road? If you encounter wait or lag time in between jobs that might save you some time when you get home.

I would second the idea of trying to use a laptop, netbook or other device to enter some reports on the road from free WiFi locations.

Flash and others have made great suggestions about adjustung expectations. It is really important that your kids and partner/spouse understand that on work days they are going to have to adjust THEIR expectations to be supportive of you and your contributions to the family finances. That may mean having someone else pop things into the oven while you are driving home, accepting something like "breakfast for dinner" a couple of times a month, more "cooked ahead meals", and someone other than you supervsing homework on occasion.

In addition, selecting shops that have 24 hour (or greater) reporting deadlines will allow you to use early morning time to input, and seeking out better paid shops and/or those with simpler reports will help you make better use of your time. Once you have a good relationship with a few schedulers, you may also be able to negotiate for mid-morning report deadlines instead of midnight because they will know that you are reliable. Their deadlines are often tight just because they want to know by their first cup of AM coffee whether or not the shop was done. A shopper with a solid rep for performance can get a lot of slack by asking for it.

Thank you for the suggestions, walesmaven. It is true that I do everything. On the days that I work, my 8 year old goes to a after school program. There is no reason she shouldn't do her homework there before I pick her up. My mind has been so occupied with all the obligations that I must complete, that I have had no time to sit back and think about these little changes that will make a huge difference. Thanks to all for your time in helping me!

sassyshopper,
Good for you. Do take some time to think through how others in your family can make useful adjustments instead of assuming that you have to do everything. AND, your eight year old may find that she looks forward to those evenings when she has her homework completed BEFORE her time with Mom starts. This could be a "win-win" situation.

I second and third everything said before. Both the expectations of your family and those you put on yourself are those of a stay at home mom. You're not that anymore. Definitely take it easy on yourself. Three months into this is such a short time and my bet is 6 months you and the fam will be more than settled into the new routine and loving it. You're 8 year old may surprise you and be happy to take on a bit of responsibility rather than just relying on you. After time all of the reports will get quicker and as walesmaven said you will learn which companies are more than willing to work with you on those deadlines. The number of MSC's who allow reports the next day are far greater than those who insist on a same day deadline.

I get up early to do my shops so I can be home early and relax a bit before cooking dinner. Also, if I have all shops with one company I email the scheduler and ask if I can have an extension of time to enter the shops because I've had to travel to get them done. They're usually OK with it.

sassyshopper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I started Mystery Shopping in October of this
> year. I really like it but am having difficulties
> managing my time. I live in a small town, so I
> have to travel to the larger cities to perform my
> shops. By the time I mystery shop all day, come
> home and make dinner, take care of the kids, ect.,
> I am exhausted by the time I get around to
> submitting my reports. I do a minimum of 5 shops
> each trip in order to make a profit. I don't even
> have time to sleep. Any suggestions to make it
> easier? I sure would hate to give it up. I am
> making good money and like what I do.

Energy Drink does it for me. a 12 ouce can and I am good to go! Not Red Bull..Ugh!

Even though I've been shopping for a while, I enjoyed reading all the suggestions. Some were good reminders of things I could be doing that have fallen by the wayside. I used to cook on Sundays and make enough for several days. Each Sunday would be a different dish and all the extras would be frozen. After doing that for a couple of months, I would have stockpiled a variety of items in the freezer to choose from on any given night. Thanks for the reminders.