In order to maintain the true beauty of your precious handmade jewelry, regular cleaning is highly recommended. Jewelry gets most affected by chlorine present in swimming pools, salt water, and perspiration. Below are the 7 useful maintenance tips for giving a long life to your jewelry.
- Never forget to remove your handmade jewelry before jumping in to the swimming pool or in salt water, and even before bathing.
- When you are getting ready for work in the morning, your jewelry must be the last thing you wear, and at night, it should be the first thing to come off.
- Make it a habit to wipe your jewelry pieces before you put them away. This will help remove moisture, skin oils, and any sort of body product residues off them. Use a soft cloth for wiping these oxidizing materials.
- Personal care products such as hair sprays, perfumes, lotions, and make up must be applied before putting on your jewelry. Doing so you can prevent your jewelry from a cloudy film that these products sometimes leave on the jewelry pieces, and also from getting damaged.
- For cleaning the hard-to-reach places of jewelry, you can simply use a mixture of water and washing powder. Soak your jewelry pieces in this solution and remove the dirt with a small toothbrush that has soft plastic bristles. Avoid using liquid soap solutions and the ones that contain bleach. If you still see any remaining dirt, soak the pieces over night in the same mixture. This will normally loosen the dirt particles and they will float away. Fresh water pearls should not be soaked.
- To store jewelry that is not worn often by you, wrap it with a soft cloth and store inside a plastic zip lock bag.
- You can save your lesser worn gold filled wire jewelry and sterling silver pieces from tarnishing by keeping them away from air as much as possible.