Hints from Hell-oise

Whenever we spill coffee or blood on our new silk blouse, we think of her. Heloise's sage domestic advice, meted out in daily newspapers around the nation, tells us how to remove unsightly odors from cloth napkins, make paper-clip holders from egg cartons, and perform dozens of household chores with cat litter.

But like any long-standing media personality, Heloise is showing incipient signs of stagnation. Reading her column regularly, we begin to see the same kinds of domestic tips repeated over and over. Virtually every hint from her readers falls into one of the following categories:

1. Ridiculously complex solutions for simple household problems ("Sometimes I have difficulty sorting socks with the lights out, so I attached tags to all of them with the name of their color written in Braille.")
2. Bizarre uses for common objects ("If you fill a your door stops with rat poison, it keeps rodents away while keeping the doors from slamming shut.")
3. Obsessive attempts to find common uses for useless objects ("I just hated to throw out the caps of dried-up ball-point pens, so I made them into individual seed starters for my herb garden.")
4. Painfully obvious solutions to common problems ("I never cut myself while chopping vegetables any more now that I hold the knife by the end with the handle.")

As an obsessive reader and admirer of this household goddess, I became distraught at the idea that Heloise was growing lackluster. I wouldn't want that bitch Martha Stewart to get any ideas about who's the preeminent authority on domestic perfection. So I decided to write Heloise with some fresh new hints to spice things up a little.

Naturally, if Heloise ever published one of my hints, it would be the highlight of my life thus far.

Dear Heloise,

When my daughter moved back from New York, she brought back her small stun gun, the kind with two electrodes that give a painful but nonfatal jolt when pressed against flesh. We thought we'd just put it in the attic until my husband came up with the perfect use for it: roasting hot dogs. You just press the electrodes on the ends of the dog, and presto! Within a couple minutes, it's just like you roasted it on the grill. My husband has even renamed his famous bar-b-que sauce "mace" in honor of our new handheld cooker. One piece of advice, though: don't hold the hot dog on a metal fork, or you'll get a nasty jolt.

Armistice Young
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Dear Heloise,

Because my stove burners use pilot lights, the metal stovetop tends to stay quite warm, and spills quickly harden up to the point where regular cleaning is a real chore. I tried every kind of cleaning fluid but I found that wadded-up balls of newspaper dipped in a little kerosene really do the trick to break down those tough spills. To protect myself from the occasional explosion while cleaning, I bought flame-retardant gloves and I stand behind an old mattress while scrubbing, just peeking out long enough to make sure I'm cleaning the right place.

Mark Kulm
Vienna, Virginia

Dear Heloise,

Few Americans know that gun sportsmanship is one of the fastest growing sports in the eastern urban United States. However, that means there are more spent bullet casings lying around, and they can choke birds and other wildlife if not cleaned up. My husband and I encouraged our sons to clean up their spent bullet casings by staring an "exchange" program. Whenever our boys fire their guns, we trade them new bullets for the old casings. When they occasionally lose a casing, we allow them to "buy" a new bullet with part of their allowance. The boys quickly learned to pick up their casings after they fire their guns, or risk running out of ammunition. We hope this will help them be more mindful citizens of the earth.

Your readers also may be interested in knowing that you can now recycle bullet casings in several cities across the U.S. Here in Washington, casings can go out to be sorted with the regular recycling twice a week.

Gloria Mather
Washington, D.C.