I’ve been looking at our silverplate utensils lately, as well as most of our silvered trays, and they are looking pretty sad! If your silver and silverplate items are really tarnished like mine are, then you might want to try this easy cleaning method for getting silver cleaned…
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How to Clean Silver the Quick & Easy Way
Here is the first batch of silverplate teaspoons which need a good scrubbing. You can see the teaspoons I use everyday; they are really tarnished!
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What you will need
- a bowl to hold hot water – the bowl will need to be tempered with gradual amounts of cool-to-eventually-hot water. I put my ceramic bowl in our stainless steel sink, so I used warm water in the sink, too, so as not to shock the bowl.
- lengths of aluminum foil – to crumple around the inside of the bowl
- baking soda – the secret ingredient!
- pair of tongs – to grab each utensil piece to flip over when trying to get tarnish off the reverside side.
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How this method works
The hot water causes a chemical reaction called electrolysis whereby the tarnish is removed when the baking soda reacts with the aluminum.
The aluminum foil, baking soda, and hot water method cleans silver through a chemical reaction called electrolysis, where the tarnish (silver sulfide) is converted back to silver by transferring sulfur to the aluminum foil, a process facilitated by the baking soda and hot water acting as an electrolyte, creating a clean silver surface and tarnished foil without abrasion.
Isn’t that interesting? I thought it was! I am glad the sulfur was transferred to the aluminum foil as I am really allergic to sulphur. I did smell something as the bubbling reaction occurred but didn’t have any lung reaction, thankfully. 😉
I have found that more hot water and more baking soda can be added if you have stubbornly tarnished areas on your silver pieces.
These are a few of the silverplate and pewter trays soaking. Not all of the tarnish came off, but they certainly look much better. If you haven’t seen my post about our wintertime hutch, I used two of the small trays there.
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Here are the results!
Almost smack-dab in the middle of this photograph is a spoon which missed the first aluminum-baking soda bath! What a difference this cleaning process makes.
Plenty of silverware still left to untarnish, but this group is clean! 😉
Thanks for visiting today! I hope you find this easy-cleaning method helpful when you clean your silver and silverplate. Let me know how your silver turns out, won’t you?
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Happy cleaning and organizing