The ‘disgustingly satisfying’ reason you should clean your jewellery more often

Sometimes even if your jewellery looks and feels clean, there could be some hidden gunk tucked away from plain sight. One Australian woman has proven just that as she shared a photo of her diamond-encrusted engagement ring covered in a mysterious film after she decided to deep clean it.

The woman posted the photo to the popular Facebook group Mums Who Clean with the caption: “This is disgustingly satisfying”. She said she soaked the two rings in ammonia and water for about half an hour before snapping a picture of the end product.

What could be seen in the picture was pieces of gunk and grime hanging off the rings that had obviously been tucked in between the small crevices of the ring for a good while. According to the comments, the ammonia and water concoction is commonly used for deep cleaning diamonds.

One commenter backed the tactic saying: “Hubby is a jeweller, he always used ammonia” while another gave a warning to others in the group: “Add some dish washing liquid as well. DON’T do this method on ANY OTHER STONES THAN DIAMONDS as it will destroy them. Also NOT suitable for plated gold or silver”.

According to a blog posted on Good House Keeping, cleaning techniques differ with the type of jewellery you’re dealing with. For instance, silver can be cleaned with a few drops of dish soap and warm water. Dip a soft cloth in the mixture and rub the silver to remove the tarnish, then rinse with cool water and buff dry to finish.

Meanwhile, for gold jewellery the blog suggests soaking items in some warm water and dish soap for about five minutes before taking them out and cleaning out pieces with a soft tooth brush to dislodge the dirt. Then simply rinse and buff dry.

Finally, a rule of thumb for pearls is to never soak them as doing so can cause the string to weaken and break. Instead, lay the strand of pearls on a soft cloth and dip a clean, small makeup brush into a mixture of shampoo and warm water and gently go over each pearl. To finish, simply rinse the pearls with a clean, well-wrung damp cloth.

Disclaimer: When cleaning your jewellery, always exercise caution, especially when using chemicals like ammonia or other cleaning solutions.