Homemade jewelry cleaner

A while back I was looking for a sterling silver cleaner for a few pieces of my jewelry. The store stuff reeks and is just nasty in general. Silver paste was just too much work for my tiny jewelry and for big pieces as well. So I searched the internet and found baking soda, aluminum foil and boiling water. It seemed too simple. I was doubtful but it was cheap, I had the ingredients and well, why not.

WOW!! It takes like 30 seconds, although you can leave it in for longer. My silver charms were so bright and silvery again.

So here I am months later and my gold jewelry cleaner is a bit watered down and not cleaning my wedding ring as well as it used to. I have gone to the store to price the cleaners and I just don't want to pay $5 or more. I wanted to make my own, less toxic cleaner.

Many recipes I saw had ammonia in it and dish detergent. I do not have ammonia on hand. I do remember it smelling awfully strong and "toxic".  Dish detergent worked ok but it still had some tarnish in the stone settings.

Other recipes I saw had a few extra ingredients to the homemade silver cleaner I found a few months back. In addition to the foil and baking soda and boiling water, they also called for salt and dish detergent. Well being lazy, I thought, why not just try the same recipe I used on my silver minus the salt and dish soap.

It works really well. My ring is so bright and sparkly and that tarnish in the setting is gone. Apparently it's silver but don't tell my hubby, he thinks silver is cheap. *eyeroll*

So from now on I will be using baking soda, foil and hot water to clean my jewelry. Everything I have read says it is safe on all metals and most jewelry. Obviously anything glued may come undone due to the boiled water. It says it is safe on pearls although I would think it would dry them out. So I would just continue to clean those with a barely damp cloth and buff them dry.

I love cheap and natural and I know some of my friends do as well. I just had to share my experience with this in case you have heard of it but doubted it. All you have to do is :

place a piece of aluminum foil in a bowl
place your jewelry on it
cover the jewelry with baking soda (enough to cover it, but I had shaky hands and dumped alot, oops)
pour boiling water over all that (enough to cover all of the jewelry)
wait 2 to 3 minutes
rinse and dry with a soft dry cloth

Try it..it's cheap and easy.

Here is a link for pearl care:  http://www.pearloasis.com/care.html