You know that sterling chain you have, the one that's been sitting in your jewelry box for the last 8 years collecting dust and turning an icky, dingy brownish black color? Well it's high time you returned it to its shiny luster! Here's a simple DIY homemade solution that takes just minutes to whip up and just minutes to watch it do its chemical magic.

First, I'm going to give you some fine print. Mainly, we use this for chain in our store. We have big spools and silver tarnishes when it sits around unused. You'll notice that when you wear silver jewelry all the time it doesn't tarnish. It's when it sits in your jewelry box that over time it starts to create oxidation on the surface. This homemade solution is technically an abrasive reaction, so we don't do this often, only when we have a bunch of items to put in, you want to limit the amount you do it because if you did this many many times you would start to corrode the metal. This is mainly for chain and very tarnished jewelry. After that, you can move to less abrasive cleaning products. 

We do not recommend this solution on jewelry that has stones or glue or enamel, this is mainly for all metal sterling silver jewelry and chain. 

This process is only for pieces that you want to be entirely bright silver. You do not want to do this solution if you have pieces where the artist intentionally blackened parts of the piece as part of the design, as it will get rid of all the black and turn everything to a bright whitish silver. I'll explain at the end of this post what to use on this type of jewelry. 

Okay, now that you know what not to do, let's gather some materials.

You'll need:

1. Boiling water

2. Aluminum foil

3. Baking soda

4. Pyrex glass or ceramic shallow dish or bowl. We use a pyrex glass pie plate. 

5. Microfiber towel

6. Hot soapy water

7. Cold rinsing water

Take a piece of aluminum foil a little over the size of your dish and put shiny side up inside your dish, pushing it down into the dish. Place your tarnished jewelry, not touching each other(very important!), and in a single layer, in the dish on the foil. Sprinkle baking soda all over your jewelry, covering the jewelry in a thin layer. Then pour boiling water on top of baking soda. You'll know the reaction is happening when everything starts to fizzle. We use a plastic utensil to move things around, if it's a bigger piece you'll want to flip it once one side seems to be brightening. There is no set time with how long it takes, as the darker the oxidation the longer it takes. However, it does need boiling hot water to work, so if you see parts of it are getting bright and other parts are still dark, we recommend pouring more boiling water in the dish so that the water gets super hot again. Once it's bright silver we take out the pieces and rinse in hot soapy water to get the baking soda film off, and then rinse in cold water, and dry it on a micro fiber towel. We then hit the silver with a polishing cloth for extra bright and shiny luster. If you've got a ton of jewelry to do you can dump out the water after the dish is full of water (keep the baking soda that's in there) and then put new jewelry in and repeat the whole process. Although you won't need as much baking soda the next time since there's still some in the dish. You can also change out the aluminum foil after awhile to see if that helps speed things up. 

Tada! Your jewelry, especially your chain links are a nice bright silver. 

So how do you keep your jewelry from tarnishing? Well for starters it helps to have jewelry storage that has an anti-tarnish interior. All our jewelry storage has a patented luster lock in the interior lining of the travel carriers. You can see those here: Jewelry Storage

Putting silicon moisture packs in your jewelry box and using anti-tarnish plastic bags (you can get on Amazon). As well as avoiding things that speed up oxidation, so wearing your silver jewelry in the ocean, pools, hot tubs and hot springs is best avoided. 

What do you do with jewelry that can't be dipped in this solution because it has design elements that are intentionally oxidized? Use a Sunshine polishing cloth: Jewelry Cleaning Cloths

Using a cloth will allow you to only clean the high parts of the piece and leaves the recesses black like the designer intended. 

Have more questions about cleaning silver jewelry? Shoot us an email hello@bohemi.com and hopefully we can answer it!