How To Clean and Green Your Silver

I’ve said it before and will say it again – “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and so true for me this past weekend. I love yard sales and buying secondhand especially when I uncover a great find be it purely functional like a wheelbarrow or vintage Pyrex dish, or really fun like this pair of sterling silver spoons I scored for about $.10 cents each after rummaging through a box destined for who-knows-where. What makes it priceless is that the initials engraved on them are mine.

So in my excitement I grabbed an old can of spray polish that has been underneath the kitchen sink for years to quickly see how the spoons would polish up. I never liked the fumes and rarely used over all these years. What I had not seen during this time was the warning on the back of the can. “THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS PERCHLOROETHYLENE, A CHEMICAL KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER. CONTENTS FLAMMABLE. KEEP AWAY” and so on.

So before I went any further, I took the extra few minutes to put together a much more earth-friendly and less toxic silver cleaning recipe to finish cleaning the spoons, as well as this silver bowl I also found at the Salvation Army store… (for only $2.99!).

Step 1: Ingredients

1 cup baking soda and 2 tablespoons salt

Pot of water to boil

Aluminum container large enough to cover the items with the boiling water. Or line a pan or bowl with aluminum foil. The aluminum is key to interact and remove the tarnish from the silver.

Step 2: Preparing the solution

Boil the water and add the baking soda and salt. Do not add until the water boils. Both must dissolve completely – about a two minutes. Also note that it fizzes up so add slowly to avoid overflowing.

Step 3: Activate

Once dissolved, pour the water over the silver pieces. You may notice that more black appears, but not to worry. It will polish off. In fact, you may see the tarnish just disappear in seconds. I wish I had my video camera going when I did the spoons – it was amazing so I’ll do that next time.

Here’s how the spoons and bowl turned out – obviously definite keepers. And for that toxic spray polish – off to our local hazardous recycling drop off center!