10 Time-Saving Hacks for Spring Cleaning

You can use these all-yearlong too.

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $4,000 Vacation + $1,000 VISA eGift Card

The Ultra High End - Food Vacuum Sealer

The Superpremium - Topolino’s Terrace

The Premium Core - Crock-Pot

The Accessible Core - 10 Time-Saving Hacks for Spring Cleaning

The Affordable Luxury - Gifting Ducky Tran Membership?

The Everyday Luxury - BBQ Social Re-rescheduled

The Bespoke

IMPORTANT CHANGE: It was brought up to me that there was an error in the Contest Period. The Contest Period has been changed to end on April 2, 2024 instead of April 5, 2024.

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $4,000 Vacation Voucher + $1,000 in VISA eGift Cards [ARV $5,012]

• Odds: For every 660 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) vacation bundle Prize

• Contest Period: February 28, 2024 at 10 AM CST to April 2, 2024 at 10 PM CST

See Issue 1 for more content about The Bespoke Prize.

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner for Issue 18 is ALEX from Arlington, Texas! Congratulations on winning the 3-Channel Dash Cam! Here is his submission for “a picture of a place to relax”:

The dash cam only took me 15 minutes to put together and install in the dad-mobile (van). I’ve captured some funny conversations between my girls already. The clarity and quality of the videos have been top notch.

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: Nesco Food Vacuum Sealer [ARV $145]

• Odds: For every 100 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) food vacuum sealer

• Contest Period: March 27, 2024 at 10 AM CST to April 2, 2024 at 10 PM CST

There are many ways to view time savings. Let’s put it in the perspective of a home cook:

1. You could save money by shopping online and having your groceries delivered

2. You could cook in with a technique that doesn’t require much attention

3. You could save the food in storage containers so you don’t have waste it and don’t have cook an additional meal

For this week, I’ve decided to make the prize a food vacuum sealer. A product that saves time by allowing you to sous vide and saves you time from having to watch the food (even though it takes longer). Also, you can preserve foods longer so you can make less trips to the grocery store and have fresher foods. Or if you want to, you can meal prep and seal it up for longer shelf-life. Fun tip: you can reseal an open bag of potato chips or cereal to allow it to stay fresh longer.

Whatever your use, I hope a vacuum sealer can save you some time.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is Topolino’s Terrace. This is a French and Italian Walt Disney World restaurant located inside the Riviera Resort in Orlando, Florida. This is one of my favorite restaurants ever; like most things, the food, the service, the experience, and the memories just made everything taste better.

From the moment you walk in, the hallway is lined with glass windows peering into the wine storage and fresh pastas ready for service. As you get into the dining area, the elegantly-lit room lined with a wall of windows with a view to the magnificent terrace creates an atmosphere to remember.

The food was plated beautifully and were all top-notch. But my wife and I really enjoyed their desserts. We had ordered the entire dessert menu and one-by-one we tried them and… every. single. one. was amazing!

There is an amazing Pistachio Mousse that we were told was going away but I hope it made a comeback because that was my favorite dessert of all Disney desserts I’ve had.

Below are pictures my wife and I were able to capture:

As you can see from the pictures, we had a wonderful experience at Topolino’s Terrace, but more importantly were the memories we made during that Disney World trip. It was when my oldest daughter, Isabella, found her first teddy bear, Pooh and third stuffed toy, Angry Donald Duck. Pooh is still with us and our third daughter, Madeleine, sleeps holding Pooh each night.

The food alone made this restaurant my top 10 restaurants, but the experience and memories push it up to my top 3 favorite restaurants in the United States. I cannot wait to go back to Topolino’s and share it with my, now, family of 6.

The Premium Core

This week’s Premium Core topic is the infamous Crock-Pot. This week’s focus is time wealth and most of us spend much of our day cooking, eating or both. There are many faster methods and techniques for cooking; however, they’re not all equal. Microwaving food can be fast, but tends to overcook meats. Air-frying gets food crispy but can make it dry. Eating cook may be an option but is rarely the preferred choice.

With a little planning, even though, slow-roasting or braising can take a lot of time, it’s not really taking much time away from you. With a Crock-Pot, you can just throw in a few ingredients, turn it on, leave it to tenderize your food for 2-8 hours and come back and serve! Since you can just throw most food items whole into a Crock-Pot, you may be saving time prepping the food and cleaning the dishes associated with the food prep. Plus having a single ceramic pot to wash at the end makes it even more of a time-saver.

I use my Crock-Pot a lot. Nearly every party we host the Crock-Pot comes out, I meal prep BBQ pork, Cajun chicken, and beef stew in my Crock-Pot every month at least once. This is made for the home cook, and worst-case scenario you have a warming pot in case you need to bring it to a potluck in the future. Here’s the deal:

Deal #1: I am offering a $40 Crock-Pot for only $15. You can order yours by going to shop.duckytran.com. There will only be 5 available so get yours before you run out of time.

The Accessible Core

10 Time-Saving Hacks for Spring Cleaning

If you haven’t noticed from previous issues, I like a clean house. I host a lot of events at my house so I try to keep it clean and tidy; however, with 4 little girls running around it becomes a full-time job just to clean after them. So today, I’ll give you some hacks I’ve learned to clean your home more efficiently:

1. Don’t scrub everything right off the bat! You’re expending too much effort and time. For the microwave, place half a lemon in a bowl of water and turn it on for 3 minutes. Afterwards, carefully remove the bowl and all the surfaces inside should be easily wiped down with a towel. The lemon helps cut down on oil and grim while leaving your microwave fresh, and the water helps steam clean the surface so you don’t have to use elbow grease to get the touch stains out.

2. Don’t bend over to hand wipe baseboards. Get a tool with a microfiber cloth or just put a microfiber towel over a broom and secure it with a rubber band. Use the tool to wipe away all the dust that collects on your baseboards and molding. I do it to air vents too, but there’s an easier way in #3.

3. Put on the brush attachment of your vacuum cleaner and brush all the dusty air vents. Careful not to do it too fast and knock the dust into the air.

4. Get yourself some Magic Erasers. These erasers clean most surfaces without harsh chemicals, but remember it works by acting like an abrasive tool so only use on non-scratch surfaces like glass, ceramic, marble, etc. It removes really difficult stains without a lot of pressure. Remember, you don’t have to use the entire eraser pad, you can cut pieces from it depending on the size of the cleaning area that way it lasts longer and have more uses from a single eraser pad.

5. Some appliances have self-cleaning functions, I’m sure many of you may not even know about them. Normally, your oven and dishwasher of cleaning cycles that can be ran. Careful with the oven cleaning cycle, the temperature goes up extremely high, between 500-900 depending on the model, to burn off all the things you would normally clean off. If your oven self-locks or have a locking mechanism, use it during the self-clean.

6. There are many tools like Swiffer dusters but if you don’t have them, just get a pair of tongs and wrap a micro cloth around it, secure with rubber bands, and clean your blinds. For wider blinds, this method works better than a Swiffer as the microfiber towel holds onto the dust better.

7. In college and early adulthood, we would normally just buy a cheap shower liner and throw it away once it got gross (which is inevitable in a high humidity space). Now we have nicer liners and shower curtains, if they get gross throw, it in the washer with some towels and detergent. Just make sure it’s on a low spin cycle and no dryers, just hang dry on its original rod.

8. Lint rollers. Surprising useful for picking lint off clothes, but also house furnishings. The lint roller picks up dust from lamp shades, dander from couches, and hair from decorative pillows.

9. Have you noticed some areas of your shower or tub looking a bit colorful? It’s probably mold or mildew. With gloves on, apply some bleach in those areas with cotton balls/pads/clothes and leave for 20 minutes. Come back and rinse it off, you shouldn’t have to scrub too hard and the beautiful colors will remain off for a long period of time.

10. Get a squeegee. You may have tried to wipe windows and mirrors with cloth or paper towels, but then you realize it leaves streaks. Most of the time, the cleaner you spray on a dirty surface washes or lifts the grime and dirt you’re trying to remove and scrubbing isn’t even necessary. That’s where the squeegee comes in. Spray the cleaner with mist function to cover the entire window or mirror. Use squeegee from top to bottom to remove liquid and debris, and wipe squeegee blade clean with a lint-free towel (microfiber preferred). Not only does this clean faster but it leaves a streak-free look that you are trying to achieve.

I hope you don’t need all these hacks but if you do, you may need the bonus hack: hire a deep-cleaning service. Generally, starting from cleaner baseline makes it easier and more manageable, but if you’re already cleaning a little every day, these hacks become more useful. Happy cleaning!

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 18 Community Poll Results

The results of Issue 18 polls doesn’t bode well for the BBQ social.

1. Looks like email will be the format to disseminate major event announcement for now.

2. Almost no one can make it on April 27, so I’ll have to reschedule the BBQ social.

3. The next Bespoke prize will continue to be a vacation package.

This Week’s Community Poll

Here are this week’s poll questions:

The Everyday Luxury

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

No BBQ Social in April 2024 for now. I’ll have to think of some way to make it easier to schedule these socials. Any suggestions are welcome in the comments or email [email protected]. Thank you!

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: vacuum