Once a year I polish all of my silver for the holidays. Usually this amounts to hours of quality time with messy polish and as a result chapped sore hands. Well today my yearly silver cleaning was complete in 20 minutes! Echoing some of my other blog posts, I just wish I would have learned about this economical and more natural technique sooner. Try this silver cleaning method to save yourself time, money, chemical inhalation and waste with just 2 things you already have in your cupboard and hot water.
All you need is:
- Aluminum foil
- Baking Soda
- Hot Water
- In the bottom of your kitchen sink lay a piece of alumimum foil down and place your silver on top of the foil.
- Sprinkle the silver liberally with baking soda.
- Pour boiling water over it and watch the tarnish disappear. For heavily tarnished items you may have to repeat.
- Rinse with water and towel dry to prevent water spots.
- Silver sulfide is the blackish tarnish that forms on the surface of silver. There are two ways to remove the tarnish. It can be removed from the surface with polish or chemical dips, or it can be reversed by using a chemical reaction to turn the silver sulfide back into silver. Polishing and chemical dipping actually removes silver.
- Interestingly enough, many metals form compounds with sulfur. Some of them, such as aluminum have a greater affinity for sulfur than silver does. With this process, sulfur atoms are transferred from silver to aluminum. The reaction between silver sulfide and aluminum takes place when the two are in contact while they are immersed in the baking soda and hot water. The solution carries the sulfur from the silver to the aluminum. When you take the used aluminum out of the sink you can see the discoloration.
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