Tips for Keeping Your Silver Sparkling the Green Way Without Chemicals

I have inherited some wonderful silver pieces for dinner that I use only on the holidays. Every year I clean the pieces and put them back in the cupboard until the next holiday or special occasion until I will need my silver pieces again. Every year I get the pieces out and they are dirty with spots on them, or are tarnished. So before I put my silver up this year, I did some research to find out the best ways to prevent my silver from becoming dirty over the year.

There is a company called Silver Storage Solutions that sells cloth containers to store your silver ware and silver pieces in. They claim the secret has to do with the minuscule pieces of silver contained in the cloth that prevents the silver pieces from tarnishing during the year.The company provides cloth containers for every type of silver you can imagine from jewelry , to dinner pieces, to your silver ware. They provide storage rolls for the silver ware and zippered bags for other items, with the bags being sold in varying sizes. Sounds like a great idea, but I was wondering what else I could do besides just store my silver in specially made cloth bags. ( www.silverguard.com)
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Before even store your silver, you can clean it in a sink of warm water making sure to place some activated charcoal in the water. Of course the amount of activated charcoal depends on the amount of water. This sounds like a great idea. The claim is that the activated charcoal hinders rust from accumulating on the silver by inhibiting the interaction of oxygen on the silver with the environment. This sounds great, but how many people have activated charcoal on hand? ( www.utut.essortment.com/howtocleanpol_rkvl.htm)

So far I had discovered some really creative and unique suggestions but I was still looking for something a bit simpler to help me keep my silver shiny and sparkling until the next special occasion. I actually found the best hints from ISA Staffing, a professional domestic staffing agency. The first thing is to wash the silver by hand. Never wash it in the dishwasher. Be sure and use it more than once a year. Prolonged storage is what tarnishes silver. So get it out for more than two special occasions a year. Do not dry the silver on a rubber mat, as the mat contains sulfur which hastens tarnish appearance. If tarnish shows up, and you don’t like the smell of the nasty silver polish cleaner, you can make your own at home polish by making a mixture of 2 tablespoons salt to 2 tablespoons baking soda. Not only does it not smell, but it also doesn’t scratch your silver. (www.isastaffing.com/tips.cfm?tida=5)

After I have went to all that effort to make sure my silver is sparkling for the next time I use it, I just might purchase some silver storing bags from Silver Storage Solutions. First I want to check what other companies might make the same type of silver storing products. Being a blue light and dollar store shopper, I am always looking for the best prices. For some strange reason, I don’t think our friendly ” Every thing’s a Dollar ” store would carry cloth silver storage bags.