Cleaning Your Grandmother's Silver

If you are like me, you may have inherited some silver pieces from some family member at some point in time.  For me, it was a few service pieces from my Mother that I believed belonged to my Great-Grandmother.  Truth be told at 23 when I was given them I had no idea what I would do with them or if I would ever do anything with them.  I haven't done anything with them until now.

Every time I would come across one of the dozen pieces I have I would look at it and say to myself... "I really should clean these."  But, of course I never did, mostly because I never had silver cleaner.  No cleaner meant they got put back into the drawer to be forgotten until some time later.  And repeat.

Jump forward about 20 years....

I had been thinking for about a week what my new post should be about.  I wanted to be able to try something that I had everything I needed.  I have list of things, but I was always missing at least one item to make it work.  Then I saw my Grandmother's silverware.... Light Bulb!  I needed to find a natural way to clean silver.

I was able to find two different recipes one from DIY & Crafts and Apartment Therapy.  They both called for hot boiling water and baking soda.  DIY & Craft has you add vinegar and salt.  I thought I would try both to see if one worked better then the other.

I gathered up what was needed.....

 I set up two dishes and got started.

There was a bigger chemical reaction with the vinegar and baking soda then with just the water.  I let them sit for 10 minutes.  And here are results.....

Not bad for having 20 years of grime on them.

Honestly, I didn't see much of a difference in which cleaned better.  Now, I know for me because the bulk of the pieces look like this....

...... I will have some major scrubbing to do with maybe even a toothbrush.

This would most definitely be a few hours to get everything clean and shiny, but I believe it can be done.  I could also see this being used for you silver jewelry.

This is worth the try.

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