A lot of us love and wear sterling silver jewellery. But the biggest problem with it is tarnishing, especially if jewellery hasn't been worn for a while.
Sterling silver is alloy of 95% of silver and the rest of copper or brass. Jewellery tarnishes because copper or brass will react with sulphur in the air.
To protect your sterling silver jewellery from tarnishing keep it in airtight bag when not wearing. Plastic ziploc bags will work perfectly. It's not very Eco friendly solution, but we get a lot of these bags with many purchases we make, so to reuse them is better alternative than throw them away. As an alternative you also can get specialized bags for jewellery storage. The most important thing is to minimize contact with air.
Or try to wear your jewellery as often as possible: we are sure you would like to show it to the World :)
Do's and don'ts when wearing silver
Do wear your jewellery as often as possible. Slight rubbing to your skin and clothes will prevent tarnishing to form in first place.
You can swim in the sea or the lake, but avoid pools, as chemicals in the pool water may react with your jewellery.
Don't put your jewellery on immediately after you have applied cream, body balm or such. Let it dry off first as some essential oils (especially lavender) and other ingredients may react with your silver leaving hard to remove stains and tarnish.
Don't wear your jewellery when cleaning with harsh chemicals, such as bleaches.
How to clean jewellery at home
Easiest and quickest way to clean silver is with a silver polishing cloth. But sometimes it can be very difficult to clean some intricate jewellery , especially chains with a silver polishing cloth alone. We would recommend to get a specialized silver dip ( sometimes called 'silver bath') , especially if you have a lot of silver jewellery. There is a large choice of silver dips in the market. In most cases silver dips are stone friendly, but read instructions before. Some may damage pearls.
Another good way of cleaning jewellery at home is to use baking soda.
Cover any glass or ceramic bowl with aluminum foil, place your jewellery, cover all pieces generously with baking soda and add hot water on top. Make sure foil doesn't have any holes and jewellery is fully covered with water. Soak for 20-30 minutes, then rinse, dry thoroughly and polish with special polishing cloth or any soft natural fiber cloth.
These methods will work on silver plated jewellery too, just be very gentle as silver plating is very thin and may come off very easy if rubbed too hard.
If nothing works, bring you jewellery to any professional and they will be able to clean it and bring back the shine. We have many tools and chemicals to do this.