Household silver items will eventually tarnish from the silver material coming in contact with Hydrogen Sulfide in the air resulting in loss of glow. In this article we will focus on cleaning silver items using household items that you most likely have around the house. The aim is to bring back that lovely glow of silver to your interior decor without causing damage to the item.
Cleaning Small or Medium Size Items
Before the cleaning process can start, you should remove the silver item and choose a sturdy surface that can act as your work surface. You will need clean water, table salt, backing soda and a small deep plate to hold the mixture together. Having prepared the necessary bits and pieces, start by padding the inside of the plate with kitchen foil until the entire inside of the plate resembles an aluminium plate. Add tablespoon of table salt, a tablespoon of backing soda and warm water into the plate. Mix the ingredients together until the baking soda had dissolved in the water. It is very common for the mixture to bubble a lot while the backing soda dissolves. Dunk the silver item in the mix, checking every few minutes if the solution had worked. In most cases, the result of this simple process will bring the silver’s glow back. It is essential that the silver make contact with the kitchen foil.
Cleaning Medium or Large Size Items
If the item is too big, the method above will prove ineffective because you will need a large enough deep plate that most people won’t have handy. The most basic (and often the quickest for large items) method is using water, toothpaste and an unused paintbrush. Simply brush the item from side to side using a clean paintbrush covered in toothpaste and rinse in water. Following this, you could consider polishing the silver using dedicated silver polish and a microfibre cloth.
There you have it, two simple to use silver cleaning methods using ingredients found in most homes.