Just How Well Will A Jewelry Cleaning Recipe Work? The Best Methods To Try To Clean Gems At Home

If you go to Pinterest or other health and beauty sites, you may come across articles that tell you that your jewelry can be cleaned with just a couple of household ingredients. This may sound a little far-fetched and you might think your favorite jewelry can do better that or won’t come out all sparkly and shiny as expected.

Obviously you want to take good care of your jewelry, but is there a jewelry cleaner recipe that actually works? Will these ingredients harm your gems in the long run? Here are a couple of jewelry cleaning recipes that others claim to work for you to try out yourself.

Household Jewelry Cleaner Recipes

For this home recipe you will need the following ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon of dish soap
• 1 tablespoon of baking soda
• 1 tablespoon of ammonia
• 2 cups of warm water

Mix the ingredients in a bowl and place your jewelry inside for a couple of minutes. If your jewelry is very tarnished, move the jewelry around in the bowl to let the solution really clean it well enough to see a noticeable difference. Afterwards, rinse with fresh water and towel dry. You can save the jewelry cleaning solution you created for later use instead of throwing it away and making more each time you wish to clean your jewelry.

If you are out of baking soda or travel and happen to carry antacid, the over-the-counter solution for an upset stomach, you can use this as a substitution. Place one to two tablets in warm water and place your jewelry in the cleaning solution for two minutes. Remove and rinse off any residue that is left over.

Another solution to consider is mixing some vinegar with water. I have used this simple solution to clean windows, mirrors, tea kettles, and other tough stains. I have yet to try it on jewelry but maybe it will be just as effective at cleaning metal as it has for other items in the past.

The Best Care for Your Gemstones

When it comes to cleaning your priceless gemstones or heirlooms, you may be very skeptical of using anything but a professional cleaning service. Who could blame you? But if you are willing to save some money and see if a household jewelry cleaning recipe will really work, you can try out these additional cleaning tips first:

• A soft toothbrush* with warm water to scrub away any dirt and grime
• Use baking soda combined with water to create a thick paste to scrub with the soft toothbrush
• Afterwards, polish with a soft cloth
• Glass or window cleaner to wipe down or create a sudsy soak for your gemstones
• Ammonia cleaner (1 part) mixed with water (3 parts) for tough gemstones

*If you are afraid that a soft toothbrush could cause damage to your gemstones, try using a paint brush or eye shadow makeup brushes instead.

Similar to the household cleaning recipes listed above, you can mix the ingredients together if you wish but using a single ingredient mixed with water or alone can be just as effective. However, depending on what type of gemstone is set in the piece of jewelry; you might have to use caution when you try to clean it.

For some gemstones you will not be able to use cleaning methods such as steaming, boiling, soapy water, or ultrasonic technology. Take special caution with soft and porous gemstones such as amber, pearls, and coral. Because of their organic and soft structure, certain chemicals from not only cleaning solutions but hairspray, cosmetics, and perfume as well can actually permanently damage them.

Therefore, a single cleaning solution may not be the best thing to use to clean all of your jewelry pieces at once. Depending on the metal and gemstone that is a part of your jewelry, you may find that need to create different cleaning solution plans for each.

Unlike soft gemstones, a tough gemstone such as Alexandrite can almost be cleaned with every method except of boiling. In fact, very few gemstones are able to be cleaned as part of a boiling method to successfully clean them unless they are extremely tough and difficult to damage like a diamond.

Ultrasonic Cleaner

One at-home jewelry cleaning solution to try is an ultrasonic cleaner which can be bought at many different department stores such as Bed, Bath, & Beyond. This neat little gizmo uses ultrasound at about 20 to 400 kHz and a cleaning solvent (sometimes just tap water will do the trick) in three to six minutes to clean several different types of jewelry at once.

Many jewelers use ultrasonic cleaners to clean the jewelry that they sell and any that customers bring in to have cleaned. If you do not trust that your jewelry has been fully cleaned after using various at-home cleaning solutions, then an ultrasonic cleaner at home or at the jewelry store might be worth trying. However, an ultrasonic cleaner may actually damage some jewelry if colored gemstones or pearls, which are soft, are placed inside the machine.

Even with so many different jewelry cleaning methods to try at home, you may still be very skeptical about whether or not they will actually clean your jewelry well enough to look new again. If you wish, try these methods out for yourself first. If you are not satisfied with the results, take your jewelry to a local jeweler to have them professionally cleaned.