ID Mommy Tip: Home Made Tarnish Remover Recipe

I picked up this pitcher on Saturday at the thrift store. I paid a little more than I normally would for a thrift store item, at $7.99. Not because I thought it had any value whatsoever, but because I just thought it was really neat. Not sure if or how I will ever use this to pour anything, but I just really liked the contrasting raw materials of silver and cork, and the chain that holds the little cork in the spout. Just a cool piece!

I realized I had packed away my bottle of tarnish remover already (during a day of closet de-cluttering, since we're trying to sell our house). But, I wanted to shine this up a bit. So, I did some online searching for a home made tarnish remover recipe.

I found one that seemed to work pretty well, so I thought I'd share. It may come in handy if you want to polish up some silver, or find something cool like I did at a garage sale or thrift store that needs a little TLC!

I had to triple the recipe in order to totally submerge this, because it is a large item and I had a big bowl. But, here is the single recipe:

Dissolve 1 Tbsp salt and 1 Tbsp baking soda in 6 cups of warm water. Pour it into a bowl that has been lined with tin foil. (This is not to protect the bowl; the tin foil is actually a part of the recipe!) Drop in your items to be cleaned, and let them soak for an hour. Here's my bowl:

(You can see I also dropped in the napkin rings I got last week at a garage sale too!) After an hour, remove, wash off, and buff dry!

This didn't get my pitcher completely spotless, but really did a good job of getting that blueish-black tarnish off. I was surprised how well it worked. I'm thinking if I had let it soak longer, it may have gotten even cleaner. I'm sure this has been sitting around tarnished for a long time. The napkin rings came out really nice!

Here you see the before and after. Not bad for items you have in your kitchen! So there you have it...a cheap and eco-friendly way to remove tarnish from your silver!