I’ve had some family heirloom baby cutlery languishing in my flatware drawer for longer that Daughter has been around, and I unfortunately never used it for her because it was so tarnished. I’ve been decluttering a lot in the last year or so, and I finally decided to either keep that family heirloom stuff for use with visiting little ones and get rid of the natty plastic stuff or keep the natty plastic stuff and get rid of the silver. This resolution coincided with me coming across this blog post, where Jen of My Make Do and Mend Year talks about polishing silver with a banana peel and some baking soda. Needless to say, I felt compelled to try this before going out and buying silver polish (which, frankly, stinks and brings back some unpleasant childhood memories).
Before I polished the baby spoons, with decades of tarnish on them
Jen’s directions involve blending a banana peel with baking soda and water to make a paste, but I’m lazy efficient by nature and cheated by just dumping baking soda on the mushy inside of the peel and massaging the peel together until I got a paste. Then I used the banana peel to rub the paste onto the spoons, mostly so that I would not have to clean a rag, and added more baking soda. I’ll be darned if it didn’t work like a charm! Afterwards, I just dumped the banana peels into the compost bucket and washed the cutlery normally.
After I polished them with banana peel and baking soda
Voila! I’m still a little stunned, because not everything works out that comes off the internet, but it certainly worked well enough that I’ll never buy silver polish again. Bananas, people, who knew?
Austerity and Prosperity 
Toothpaste works too! 🙂
Really? I always used toothpaste to clean our sinks and our glass top stove in the States, but I’d be afraid of using it on silver. I suppose it’s not anymore abrasive than baking soda though…