Natural Jewelry Cleaner

Ahhhhh, baking soda. Oh how I love thee. When you make the switch to a "nasty chemical" free home, baking soda is one of those extremely versatile substances that you will have to buy in bulk. I recently went into my jewelry box and realized that a lot of my stuff was tarnished. Mostly my pretty delicate silver necklaces that I love to layer, that don't look so fantastic on when they are dark and tarnished. Now, this is a normal thing, and it is actually quite easy to clean without toxic chemicals. As some of you may know, jewelry cleaners and silver polishes are HIGHLY toxic, and can cause rashes (of which I have seen some really nasty ones that took months to heal from jewelry cleaner) and are terrible for you to breathe in. I promptly sat down at the trusty computer (what would we do without google?!) and found an easy technique for cleaning silver and gold jewelry with... you guessed it... baking soda. This "recipe" is courtesy of the awesome website, Organic Authority,  which I urge you to check out- it is a great place for health information, recipes and other insightful articles. So without further ado, here is the recipe:

You will need:

Aluminum foil
Baking Soda
Hot water
a shallow dish/bowl (I used a pyrex lasagna dish)

Simply lay foil along the bottom of the dish, covering it as best you can. Place your jewelry onto the foil, and try to make as much of the jewelry touch the foil as possible. Boil a pot of water. While it boils, spread baking soda all over your jewelry, as much as you need to make sure it is covered well. When the water is boiling, pour it into your dish and over your jewelry, and wait for the magic to happen! This takes anywhere from a few minutes up to 30 minutes.

When I did this the other day, the concoction fizzed like crazy and I could see (and, oddly, smell) the tarnish lifting off the jewelry. I let it sit for about 15 minutes, and then inspected the pieces, and a few of them were bright and clean and didn't need more time, and some of them still had some tarnish on them, so I actually did a whole second round with fresh baking soda and boiling water, and then they came out nice and clean.

I encourage you to try this if you want your tarnished jewelry to look like new, and are trying to avoid nasty chemicals. It really does work, and I was so pleased that it was so easy to do. Please let me know if you try it and what you think!