Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Calling all silver wearers...help is on the way!!!


I wear a lot of silver jewelry and for some reason a lot of it had begun to tarnish recently.  I spent hours with those pesky, oily, little silver cloths polishing each piece until it glistened, only to have them tarnish again in no time.  Since patience is not a virtue I've been able to master, I knew I had to find a better solution.

As far as I'm concerned, there's only one place to go for the answers to all of life's questions...the all knowing Google!!

Lo and behold, I came across this little life saver.

Here's what you'll need:

Glass/Ceramic Bowl
Aluminum foil
water
baking soda
salt
dishwashing liquid
polishing cloth

1.  First boil a cup of water (or enough to cover your jewelry)

2.  Line your bowl with aluminum foil

3.  Add 1 tsp of baking soda, 1 tsp of dishwashing liquid and 1 tsp of salt to the dish.  It'll get a little bubbly.


This is what the solution looks like at the beginning of the process.

4.  Place your silver jewelry into the bowl, allowing all pieces to touch the aluminum foil.  Allow to soak 5-7 minutes


After a few minutes, it begins to turn this dirty color and develops a bit of an odor.

5.  Remove the jewelry from the cleaner and rinse under cool water.  You might want to use tongs to retrieve the jewelry as those with sensitive skin might be affected. It didn't bother me at all though.

6.  Some pieces might require a light buffing to remove a sort of film.  I think only one pair of my earrings required this. 

Nice, shiny jewelry
 It's amazing how something this simple can make me so happy!

I did this about a month or so ago, and all of my pieces are still tarnish free.  I've read that this solution can be used on all sorts of silver...jewelry, serving pieces, etc....you just have to adjust the amounts of each ingredient to suit your needs.

Now go gather up all that nasty jewelry and bring it back to life!



3 comments:

  1. What an awesome tip! Thank you! I have a good bit of silver jewelry too, and I HATE cleaning it. Thanks for the "recipe." :)

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  2. Chemistry is a pretty amazing thing, isn't it? If I could figure out the "why" behind it, it would be a fun demonstration to do at school.

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  3. I think this comes under the heading of "who knew". Actually this sounds similar to those silver cleaning pad things you can buy on TV ads. Thanks for the tip Shannon.

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