Toothpaste and foil hacks for sparkling clean cutlery
Before the holidays, we pull out the cutlery from the drawer that we forgot about until now. Even the most beautiful spoons and forks lose their charm if they are covered with streaks and buildup. Instead of immediately reaching for chemical agents, take a look in the bathroom and kitchen cabinets.
3:47 PM EST, November 19, 2024
Forgotten, dusty, and coated with residue, cutlery can be easily brought to an almost perfect state. Toothpaste proves to be not only an essential part of the morning and evening routine but also a practical way to make spoons look new, shining with cleanliness. Thanks to the gentle particles contained in toothpaste, you can effectively remove discoloration and give cutlery a shine. All you need is toothpaste, a soft brush, and a few minutes of patience to make spoons, forks, and knives look like new.
Cleaning cutlery - Toothpaste trick
Toothpaste is not just a product for oral hygiene but also a great cleaning agent for many surfaces, including silver cutlery. Its gentle abrasives efficiently remove discolorations and give silver a shine.
Pour about 4 cups of water into a pot, add a tablespoon of baking soda and a teaspoon of sugar, and bring to a boil. Then, add a tablespoon of toothpaste and mix thoroughly. Drop the cutlery inside and boil for 10 minutes. After this time, remove them from the pot and polish them with a clean cloth. They will shine like new. This way, you won’t overspend on polishers.
How to clean silver cutlery?
In your kitchen cabinets, you'll find many products that will work for household cleaning. Salt and aluminum foil can restore the former shine to silver cutlery. Compared to other methods of cleaning silver, such as using polishing pastes or specialized chemical agents, the method using salt and aluminum foil is natural and economical.
Line a bowl with aluminum foil, add 5 tablespoons of table salt, and fill with about 4 cups of boiling water. Drop the cutlery inside and leave it for a few hours. This method will help even heavily tarnished cutlery regain its shine.
How does it work? Cleaning silver cutlery using salt and aluminum foil is based on a chemical reaction. The table salt, hot water, and aluminum create an electrolytic solution. The silver cutlery then acts as the cathode, and the aluminum foil as the anode. As a result of the oxidation-reduction reaction, the tarnish is transferred from the silver to the aluminum foil, restoring the cutlery to its natural shine.
