Cleaning Silver

I'm sharing a tip for cleaning silver that works so well I could see the change! Tom Kelley is a Chemistry teacher at ASH and shared this tip with the staff. Mike knew I'd be interested and forwarded it home to me. Without further ado, I went into the kitchen, gathered up my silver teaspoons that I've been eying warily for the past week or so and tossed them into the silver bath.

I don't really mind cleaning silver the old-fashioned way, with a tub of Twinkle (how old-fashioned can that actually be, come to think of it??) and a little elbow grease, but thought I'd see if this really was as easy as it sounded. It was! I'm just sorry I didn't take a 'before' photo, because there really is an impressive difference in the spoons. The other advantage, the first being time-saving, is that several of my spoons have intricate motifs and the bath got right into all the little nooks and crannies and cleaned them out too! When I rinsed the spoons off and dried them with a soft cloth, some of them had completely changed their wardrobe and new details came to light - literally!

Following is the text of Tom's email, verbatim (can I say that if it's written?) and a photo of my spoons at the end of their bath:

"If you have silver dinnerware or jewelry you wish to clean, this method mimics the one seen on TV from time to time in North America and sold for around 25 dollars.
This is certainly cheaper and is the same thing.

Step 1: Find a glass bowl or baking dish.
Step 2: Line it with aluminum foil.
Step 3: Put the silver jewelry or silverware in the bowl - on top of the foil.
Step 4: Take a large tablespoon of baking soda or washing soda and spread it over the jewelry.
Step 5: Next boil enough water to cover the items in the bowl, pour it over the jewelry.

Wait about fifteen minutes and remove the items and rinse them in cold water.

The results? beautiful shiny jewelry you'll be proud to wear. The smell of rotten eggs is normal as you are making hydrogen sulfide from the silver sulfide on the silver items. Silver sulfide is tarnish.

I always find that I have to wipe off the silver items with a paper towel as well.
Tom Kelley"