Dos and Don'ts for Cleaning and Caring for Your Jewelry

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.

Written by Shelia Foster. Find the latest information on David Yurman Inspired Jewelry as well as David Yurman Replicas.