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Sophie’s Cleaning Tips
Washing Sterling Silver Cutlery in Your Dishwasher
While many people now swear by stainless steel knives, forks and spoons and won’t use anything else, there is something really appealing about the look and feel of sterling silver. Silver has a distinctive lustre, and gives a real touch of elegance to every table setting. Of course, when it comes to cleaning silver cutlery, some people are reluctant. Thinking that sterling silver can’t be washed in a dishwasher, or that it has to be handled with kid gloves when hand washed, some people who own great sterling silver cutlery tend to leave it packed away for special occasions, using their ordinary stainless steel stuff for normal meals.
In actual fact, it is safe enough to run your silver pieces through a modern dishwasher. You do have to be a little more careful than you do with stainless steel, however if you treat them right, you can wash your sterling silver knives, forks and spoons just as quickly and easily as all your other tableware.
Before loading silver pieces into the cutlery basket of your dishwasher, run them under a lukewarm tap to take off any excess food or grease. This will mean that the wash cycle isn’t rubbing these particles against the silver as the cleaning takes place. You should also make sure that the silver pieces aren’t touching anything else. There can be metallic reactions which will leave spots on your pieces if silver and steel or other materials are touching during the washing process.
In general, if you follow these guidelines, you can wash your silver cutlery regularly with your dishwasher without the shine and quality of the silver degenerating at all. You may want to buff the pieces up gently with a cloth after washing just to ensure there are no smears.
