Cleaning Silver Jewelry with What You Have

Silver is well known for the way it tarnishes, turning a dingy, brown color over time. Thankfully, this tarnish can be removed. If you can get a silver polish, that will be your best bet, but in a pinch, there’s something else you can use, and you already have it in your house.

This secret house cleaning ingredient? Toothpaste.

It’s amazing what a little bit of toothpaste can do to tarnished jewelry. If you want to clean your jewelry and test it for yourself, try this:

Apply the toothpaste. You will want to use soft cloths with your silver, so use lint free cloths to rub the toothpaste into the silver.

Let sit. Like any other cleanser, the toothpaste needs to sit on the silver for a little while in order to counteract the oxidation.

Wipe clean. Take some time on this step, you will be removing the tarnish as you’re wiping the toothpaste clean. Scrub a little bit if needed, and switch to clean cloths whenever the cloth you’re using starts to get dirty.

Make sure you get all of the toothpaste off, or your jewelry will feel sticky.

When it’s completely cleaned and all the toothpaste is gone, you should have nice, shining silver, ready to wear.

While this works better on small pieces of silver with a little bit of tarnish, some people have been successful at cleaning flatware and even bigger items. When you don’t have silver polish and really need something silver cleaned, take the toothpaste to it first—you might be surprised!