Surprisingly Good Silver Cleaner

I finally broke down today and tried that all natural silver cleaner I've heard about on TV for years. You know the one where you use a quart of hot water + a sheet of aluminum foil + 1TB each baking soda and salt. Dissolve the ingredients in the sink, lay the foil in the water, put your silver jewelry on the sheet of foil and VOILA! Clean silver.  Yeah.  Right.


While I'm no chemist, I just couldn't see how this could possibly work.

You could have knocked me over with a feather today when I tried it and it actually worked. Go figure. I had a couple intricate pieces of Celtic jewelry that I hadn't worn in years simply because I dreaded using noxious cleaner to restore them. Ditto my favorite silver hoops and a necklace my mother in law gave me a dozen years ago.

I'm just stunned how well it worked. It only took a minute of soaking to loosen up the crud and a bit of rubbing with a soft cloth to bring my jewelry back to a high gloss. The large silver charm, featuring wolves interlaced into a Celtic knot, that took a bit longer soaking, maybe an additional 2 minutes, but then they polished right up.

And the best part: no horrid fumes. Total cost, about 7 cents. Love that!