How To Clean Silver

How To Clean Silver
Written by Michelle Staley

I LOVE antique and vintage silver and silverplate. I have gobs of plated flatware sitting in plastic bags because I just have not gotten around to cleaning it or doing anything else with it for that matter. But here are a couple of ways to easily clean silver and silverplate without getting finger cramps from buffing and shining.

The first is using sour milk. Now if you don't have a quart of sour milk in the frig, you can put the juice of 1 lemon in a quart of milk. Let it sit for about 10 minutes and you have sour milk. Pour this into a glass dish large enough to hold the quart of nasty milk and the silver you are going to clean. Be sure to cover the items you are cleaning. Let it sit overnight and you will wake up to nice shiny silver. Be sure to wash and dry it well.

Option 2) Get a large flat aluminum pan or one of the disposable aluminum pans, place your silver or silver-plate items in it. Boil a pot of water and pour this over your tarnished silver. Add a tablespoon of baking soda and a pinch of salt. This will bubble and boil but once all the action has stopped you will have tarnish free silver.

** I have tested both of these methods and they worked great for me but I assume no responsibility for what might happen when you use them. **