Polishing up the silverware used to be one of those cleaning jobs that was left to the butler – and brass was left for the housekeeper. However, these days, we have to clean this sort of thing ourselves (unless we want to hire a professional cleaner). Even if we don’t have masses of family heirlooms in our homes these days, most of us have some metal somewhere that needs to be kept shiny. So how do you clean metalwork without using some ferocious chemical that leaves you with itchy skin?