Cleaning Silver

Mostly gone are the days when young couples got fine china and silver for their weddings. Oh it still happens but most couples tend to get much more practical things now.

Which is not to say better necessarily -- just different than it used to be.

My mother received this silver tea set as a wedding gift over 40 years ago. After marrying again a couple of years ago, she wanted to make sure that it was passed on to me.

It's been in storage a few years but I carried it home after our last trip there. If you have real silver anything, you may recognize what's on it in that picture.

All silver tarnishes over time. It just so happened though that this very week, one of my favorite blogs had a tip for cleaning silver.

It's apparently an old tip that housewives have been using for some time. I looked it up because I was terrified of ruining such a treasure. After all, it has value in more than one way for me.

It's very simple to clean actually. You line your sink with aluminum foil, sprinkle baking soda liberally over it, and add the silver. You then boil water and, when it's boiling, pour it on top making sure to cover the silver completely.

After that, it's a matter of letting it soak a bit while a pretty wild chemical reaction takes place. I wasn't sure what to expect. It worked quite well though. I got a little concerned when it initially foamed a little but that was gone quickly.

There was also quite an odor. I understand that sulfur is involved in the chemical process in some way so I suppose it might have something to do with that.

The silver was pretty tarnished. I had to let it soak for a while. When it was done, this is what my foil looked like.

Yuck! It was pretty gross looking. But I guess I knew it worked that way. I took out the pieces and rubbed them down with a soft towel.

I wanted to make sure they were good and dry.

This is what they looked like when all was said and done.

Beautiful, don't you think. Now I just have to buy some more baking soda and figure out what I have that is big enough to submerge completely the tray.

I'll probably do the whole thing again in another week. They were pretty tarnished after being stored and they probably need one more soak for all the intricate little nooks and crannies.

If you want to read the post I mentioned, you can find it here. She is always adding neat little tips and such for green cleaning.