Soap Nuts

Soap nuts are the central ingredient in my house cleaning and laundry practices. But with the holidays my fine china, linen table clothes and napkins, and the fine silver gets used and often abused.

Polishing my silver flatware has always been an odious task for me. Probably going back to childhood when I was forced to clean the silver for my paternal grandmother as a regular task when I visited them. Cleaning silver was never easy, but with soap nuts it is a breeze.

I’d read that soap nuts have been used for centuries as a chemical free jewelry cleaner, which I hadn’t tried, but for some reason I never thought about polishing my silverware with soap nuts before this.

After a dinner party on December 24th, for my mate’s birthday, I had tons of dishes and silverware to wash. I was dreading it, especially since I recently decided to abandon the dishwasher and do my dishes by hand. So when it came time to clean that huge pile of silverware I thought I’d be at it for days instead of hours.

Much to my own surprise cleaning the tarnish off the silver flatware  with soap nuts liquid was so easy I am thinking of using the silver more often. I use soap nuts liquid for cleaning many things, and since I started handwashing dishes I use it as my dish liquid. All it took to clean the silverware, even the stuff with food caked to it in a crust was a few squirts of soap nuts liquid on a sponge and a tiny bit of rubbing with the abrasive side of the sponge. Wow chemical free silverware polish, what a joy!

With very little effort I have sparkling clean and very shiny silver flatware. Now here’s really great part of this is that the silver is my mother’s wedding silver. Actually I have two sets, one is Mom’s and one belonged to my father’s parents. Over the years it has been neglected and often cleaned in a way that has scratched the surface causing even more tarnish to build up. I thought we were destined to have tarnish on this beautiful silverware forever because of the damage already done to it.

You’ve probably read somewhere that toothpaste is a good homemade way to clean silver. I warn you against it though because toothpaste, by its nature, is abrasive and it will cause fine scratches in your silver that will actually encourage more tarnish over time. If you want a homemade silver cleaner, then try soap nuts liquid.

I really should do some before and after pictures on this one because the results astounded me. Cleaning with soap nuts has made my life so much easier and healthier but to have more soap nuts uses makes me even happier.

Once again soap nuts exceeded my expectations, made a nasty cleaning experience into a happy one. I am thrilled that I did it all chemical free with no harm to me or the environment and without having to buy a special product just to do this one occasional task.

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