The last time my daughter was visiting she pointed out how tarnished my daily silverware looked. I told her it was supposed to be that way. I call it tarnish ware........All joking aside, it was pretty bad, but I hate polishing silver. In fact, I've gotten rid of most of my silver for that very reason. Also, we aren't really the silver entertaining type. I do love my everyday silver though, so I decided to try this solution that my mom told me about. Guess what? It works!!! Really. The most time consuming part was measuring the ingredients. I had it all done in less than 15 minutes. Now I'm not going to ever have an excuse for having tarnishware again. Here's what you'll need:
- 20 C (5 quarts) hot water
- 1 1/4 C (10 oz) white vinegar
- 1 1/4 C (10 oz) salt
- aluminum foil
I decidedly kitchen sink was going to be the easiest place to do this. I doubled the ingredients so that the solution was deep enough to cover all the utensils.
First, fill your container (sink) with the hot water. Add the salt and vinegar and stir to combine.
Now add foil to the container, submerging it to the bottom.
Add whatever needs to be polished to the solution, making sure it's touching the foil and totally submerged. If it's not touching the foil, it doesn't work. My tarnish was instantly removed. In fact, I didn't get a very good picture showing how bad it was because it happened so quickly.
Shiny & bright!
I was so excited, I decided to do my jewelry too. I used a smaller container and changed the measurements for the solution. For a small batch use 1 C water, 1 TBL salt, and 1 TBL vinegar and a small piece of foil.
Now let's see if my daughter notices...
Warning---If you have a pattern that is intricate and you like the tarnish in the cracks, don't use this solution because it will remove all the tarnish.
I'll keep you posted...
Lynn
