I'm a huge fan of antique jewelry, but I don't really know how, and quite frighten to care and clean for my antique jewelry properly. Could anyone provide me helpful advice?

Cleaning your precious antique jewelry could understandably seem a bit intermediating, as the pieces are usually more fragile and thus more prone to damage. However, if you carefully follow the instructions I'm about to provide, you shouldn't be so concerned about this whole matter and enjoy having your antique jewelry spick and span! The most important thing is to try and preserve your jewelry pieces in the best possible way, and to make sure to protect your antique jewelry from dust. Although dust seems harmless, it acts as an abrasive to most of your fine jewels and may cause deterioration, and that's why it's important to store your antique jewelry very carefully. It's advised to wrap each piece individually in a special jeweler tissue and store them in a soft zipped pouch. This way you're ensuring that your antique vintage jewelry are kept in an ideal dust free, dry environment. However, despite all your hard efforts, dust will sooner or later find its way and settle on top of your beloved jewels. In order to clean your jewelry properly, it's important to follow the next cleaning tips. Make sure that you are extra gentle when it comes to cleaning your jewelry. You should never soak your jewelry in cleaning product or even submerge them in water, as this often causes permanent damage. Instead, use a soft clean cloth and mildly damp it in a cleaning agent or water, but make sure it's not too wet - only barely. By the way, I recommend using Windex as a cleaning agent, but please remember never to spray it directly onto your jewelry, but rather spray it onto a clean soft cloth as described. In order to clean in between harder to get to places, you could use a Q-tip damped with a little bit of Windex product. Although you can find lots of people to tell you otherwise, I usually don't recommend using a soft toothbrush to clean your antique jewelry with, because usually people use old toothbrushes that might contain remnants of toothpaste. That could be very unsafe because toothpaste most often contains some sort of bleaching agent that's extremely harmful for delicate jewelry! Like I said, it's best to avoid using toothbrushes altogether to make sure you're not taking any unnecessary risks. After you gently cleaned away any dust or grease that might have accumulated on your antique jewelry, it's important to make sure that the pieces of jewelry are completely dry before restoring them. I would recommend giving them a good wipe with a dry cloth and leaving them out to dry for at least one hour. If you were to store your antique jewelry while they were still damp, it could cause certain delicate gemstones, such as Rhinestone, to crack and damage. Bottom line, when cleaning your delicate antique jewelry just use your common sense and make sure you're extremely gentle! If you carefully follow the steps I've described above, there's no reason for you to feel anxious when caring and cleaning for your beloved antique jewelry.

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I think that dirt actually makes vintage jewelry look more genuinely old and antique. I don't work in a "hands-on" kind of job, and therefore my jewelry doesn't get filthy. I seriously don't see the point in cleaning your antique jewelry if the piece of jewelry didn't accumulate extensive grease filth or something extreme like that. Most probably, your antique jewelry just gathered some dust particles, in which case I personally recommend to just leaving it as it is. Not only is it better not to take the risk of inflicting damage on your antique jewelry by cleaning it, the "dirty" look makes it look much more distressed and aged, which is exactly what antique jewelry is appraised for.

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My answer

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