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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

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Cleaning (A Silver-Filled) House

January 25, 2012

My mess of a jewelry storage area left me with tangled necklaces, lost earrings, and some really dingy looking sterling silver pieces. The humidity in the guest room where everything had been stashed until just this week (when I made a snazzy herringbone jewelry hook) really took it’s toll on some of my favorite jewelry.

Tarnished necklace chains.

I had bought a bottle of silver cleaner a few years ago, but I’ve been wanting to test a few other solutions I’d seen circulating online. Two slightly different solutions, in fact. The lotion-consistancy potion that came in the bottle from the store does clean some pieces of jewelry well, like rings that you can grip on to and scrub really furiously, and pieces of sturdy flatware and all, but for some things,  like, dainty necklaces and items with lots of detail, I’ve been less inclined to want to try and clear up tarnish with anything that requires elbow grease and gritted teeth. And that is why all of my delicate silver is gross.

In addition to the items shown in that first picture, a few other pieces needed to be well-cleaned too. Since I was putting my items to the test, I added to the pile.

This silver cup with lots of handle crevices. Really bad:

Those handles are hard to clean; will one of these solutions work?

A silver candle tray with lots of surface area and hard to clean details:

Tarnished silver tray.

Most at-home, eco-friendly, super-inexpensive, easy-to-do, fast tutorials that I came across began with the same simple instructions.

1. Line a glass or pyrex pie plate with aluminum foil. Curl it up around the edges, make it a little silver bowl. (Grapefruit is not actually part of this experiment, yo.)

Line a glass or pyrex pie plate with tin foil.

2. Test #1 that I conducted asked that I place items directly in the dry tin foil. Some reports wanted me to make sure they were all touching one another, others didn’t specify such.

Put items on the tin foil. Touching together or not, didn't seem to make a huge difference.

3. Sprinkle the items with a few tablespoons of baking soda (I did about 3, enough to lightly coat everything).

Sprinkle, sprinkle. Just a few tablespoons of baking soda.

4. Submerge those items with hot water. Mine was almost to a boil. Enjoy the sulfuric love emitted from the baking soda and the foil. Twiddle your thumbs for 5 minutes or eat half of a grapefruit. Oh, and the silver cup partially submerged on its side like the Concordia was really just for experimentation, you’ll see.

Soak, soak, little tarnished items.

5. I mixed the pieces around a little bit. One tutorial mentioned that every part should come in contact with the foil; I didn’t see quite how that was possible, but maybe I was over thinking it.

In any case, when I brought the pieces out, it seemed to have worked quite well. I may have been working under a light bulb and look a little yellow-ish, but each of the little die cut areas around the edge were very clean (and from experience, it’s hard to be thorough in those areas with a cloth and cleaning lotion). I won’t go about showing you the rings and other things that were in the Test #1 batch because I’m trying to whittle 109 photos down to a digestible post length, so trust me, they looked like new.

Voila, that's shiny.

Everything seemed good except for one thing: The silver cup. Admittedly, it was a bit worse off than the rest of the items on my must-silver-clean list, but the baking soda didn’t seem to do anything to clear up the finish, and that surprised me.

Whoa, that cup's still really tarnished.

But if you caught my mention of it earlier, leaning the cup on its side was just a little bit of a test. I had a second solution that I wanted to try, and along with the cup I had kept my fragile chain necklaces aside to see how it’d perform. Onwards with solution test #2.

What was different about test #2? (Note that I’m no physicist, so I can’t defend which of these variables played a more significant role.)

  • It added salt to the mix.
  • Before any jewelry was placed on the foil-covered tray, equal amounts of salt and baking soda were dissolved in hot water. Once again, I used 3 TBSP of each the baking soda and the salt.
  • The jewelry was dipped in after dissolving the water/salt/soda solution.

Cup resuming its position on its side and jewelry overhanging the edge carefully, I let it soak for 5 minutes (and ate the rest of my grapefruit), and then carefully removed everything.

The necklaces were lovely; all signs of tarnish on and between each link, gone. That’s a big win, I never could have done it with the cleaner I bought at the store.

Lovely clean necklaces.

More surprisingly, the silver cup was highly effected. So clean that you can see me behind the camera in it. Was it the addition of salt in the water that did the trick? Was it the dissolved and foamy baking soda that made it more powerful? Was the tin foil given secret powers with the pre-mix?

Now, that's clean.

Science-y friends, I need to know more. Any ideas?

What other DIY’ed solutions have you tried for cleaning silver jewelry and decor?

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Being Thrifty  / DIY

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

14 Comments


Julie @ The Family CEO
January 25, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Reply

I am a lover of all things silver so have used both the polish and the hot water/baking soda/aluminum foil techniques. In general, the polish works better, but I prefer not having to use it if I don’t have to, especially on pieces we eat with, like flatware.

I’ve never tried adding salt, so I will do that and get back to you. Great post!



    Emily
    January 25, 2012 at 2:43 pm

    Thanks Julie! I wish I had tried it out sooner – I’ve spent so many hours scrubbing and scrubbing with the lotion!

Hotly Spiced
January 25, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Reply

Hi, I found your blog through Blogstar. I loved reading your story. Congrats on all you’ve achieved in just seven months. Hmmm…cleaning the silver! You’ve reminded me to something I’ve been putting off for years. And my jewellery could do with a major sorting too.



    Emily
    January 25, 2012 at 6:26 pm

    Thanks for stopping in! Just for clarification, I’ve been blogging on Merrypad for about 14 months, but only was able to leave my job and dedicate myself to it full time about 7 months ago (May 2010). Good luck with the silver cleaning – salt highly recommended!

Janet
January 25, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Reply

I have silver that is so tarnished I didn’t know where to start. Thanks.



Alberta
January 25, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Reply

I’ll try it!
Thanks



Gin
January 25, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Reply

This technique works wonders on my silver chains. I like to display them, so tarnish is inevitable.

Next time you’re at a JoAnns or other fabric store, take a look at anti-tarnish cloth; it’s in the Utility fabrics section. If you wrap the cup in the cloth pre-storage, it’ll help keep the ugliness at bay.



    Emily
    January 25, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    Good tip! I also read that storing silver with those packets of silica beads helped to manage the humidity and reduce tarnish.

Anne
January 26, 2012 at 11:54 am
Reply

Fun Fact of the Day:
In short, the aluminum is what gets rid of the tarnish. Transfer of electrons to turn silver sulfide (tarnish) back into silver… all that jazz. The aluminum is the key to all of this. The salt and baking soda just speed up the process (as does the warm water). By dissolving it, the whole process probably just works faster.
Sidenote: During my quick search to make sure I did remember this correctly from those chemistry flashbacks, I learned that a lot of the prepackaged solutions will remove the tarnish AND some pure silver along with it. As long as the silver is touching the aluminum and you include some salt, this home remedy seems smarter.



    Julie @ The Family CEO
    January 26, 2012 at 12:20 pm

    Great info, Anne. So based on what you’ve told us, would be helpful/advisable to actually store silver with aluminum foil? Would that help keep the tarnish at bay?

    Anne
    January 26, 2012 at 1:24 pm

    No, it seems that too much cleaning is a bad thing. Most things seem to advise cleaning your silver only when necessary. Polish as much as you’d like with soft cloths. Do not use any sort of abrasive solutions (i.e. baking soda) on their own while polishing as this will scratch the metal.

    Emily
    January 26, 2012 at 8:14 pm

    Awesome insight. Thanks for going to college and learning these fancy things!

Heidi
January 27, 2012 at 1:56 am
Reply

Just last week I finally tried a silver polishing cloth for the first time. Despite my skepticism it was actually fantastic! I was working with jewelry. I think your methods might be better with all the little details. But on the whole I am a big polishing cloth fan now. :)



    Emily
    January 27, 2012 at 10:23 am

    I’m going to have to try one of these cloths. Can you clean it once it gets filthy or do you have to buy new? I assume buy new but hear that they aren’t too expensive. The silver necklaces and bracelets were so hard to clean with the lotion, only because you had to move gently along each link. Dipping it in the solution instead was a big win.

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