On the house

In Competition No. 3017 you were invited to submit a sonnet containing household tips.
 
You were on sparkling form this week and there were plenty of stylish, inventive entries to choose from. I was riveted by your recommendations and hope to put them to the test, though I might just take John Whitworth’s word for it: (‘Prick sausages and they will never burst./ A pint of piss will slake a raging thirst.’) Commendations go to David Silverman, Joseph Conlon, Jennifer Moore, Fiona Pitt-Kethley and A.H. Harker. The winners earn £20 each. Basil Ransome-Davies trousers £25.
 

A healthy dose of vinegar will clean
Your windows and wipe porn smears off your screen.
A saucer makes a handy weapon if
You need to finish a domestic tiff.
You overdo the vodka or the gin?
Dump all the empties in your neighbour’s bin.
Old copies of the Daily Mail will do
For visitors who badly need the loo,
And anti-orthopaedic chairs for guests
Whom you regard as knuckle-dragging pests.
Save money by not buying cutlery,
Just nick it from the local KFC,
And if you want to be your granny’s heir
Much sooner than expected, soap the stair.
Basil Ransome-Davies
 
Your eyes, my love, are chilly as the ice
With which you shift unwanted chewing-gum;
Brisk as your toothbrush when you clear the crumb
From toasters are your words, which are not nice.
 
The vinegar with which you clean the glass
Is not more acid; and the potent meths
Which gives to ballpoint stains deserved deaths
Does not in virulence your glare outclass.
 
You would be rid of me, my household queen.
(Much as with cedar you deter the moth.)
Yet I too have a microfibre cloth;
So might not we together live and clean?
 
Would you but spill the red wine of your love,
I could, like salt, absorb it from above.
George Simmers
 
To whiten grimy grouting, an old toothbrush
and lemon juice will clean where dark mould thrives.
The same juice freshens worktops, mugs and loo flush
(the lowly lemon leads so many lives).