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Dos and
Don'ts for Cleaning and Caring for your Jewelry
Author: Shelia Foster
One trick to
really making your jewelry
sparkle is to always make sure that it is clean and shiny when you
are wearing it. Jewelry will become dull in time even from the oils
that your body naturally secretes. Never scrub away at your jewelry
with tooth paste and a tooth brush as the fine grit in the tooth
paste will scratch softer gems and gold surfaces. Soaking jewelry in
a mild non detergent cleaning solution works great. Soap has a
tendency to build up its own film on jewelry just like it does on a
shower door.
There are
jewelry cleaning devices available that use ultrasonic sound waves to
clean jewelry and they work great. These devices operate by
submerging the jewelry in a mild cleaning solution while it is
bombarded with very high pitched sound waves that vibrate loose any
dirt and grit. Always pay close attention to your stones settings.
One way that you can quickly check the setting of a stone it to hold
it next to your ear and tap it with your finger nail. If it is loose
it will give off a faint rattling sound.
Never pile all
of your jewelry together in one drawer, because harder pieces such as
diamonds and gems can scratch each other as well as the surface of
gold jewelry. Keep them separately and if you have gone through the
expense of buying the jewelry you may as well buy a nice jewelry case
that is designed for safely storing jewelry. Think about taking your
jewelry off when you are home and particularly when you are doing
house work as this will assure that is is nice and clean when you do
go to wear it. |
