Storing Your Jewellery
Do you struggle with how to store your jewellery? Do you have lots of different jewellery boxes in different draws, forgotten in corners and it takes you a while to hunt down the necklace you want to wear? Or maybe you have a jumble of necklaces tangled in a pot on the side and anytime you want to wear one you have to untangle it all, which I know is even harder in a rush. Or maybe you have found that your silver jewellery has a blackened colour or has developed a brassy sheen? Not to worry you are not alone, these things unfortunately happen to us all, but there are some solutions we can put into place to minimise these annoying things.
What we are going to focus on here is how to store your jewellery to minimise tarnish and those awful tangling incidents. Not just at home, but also on your travels!
How to put your jewellery away
First things first blackened or brassy silver, what is going on?! Not to worry it isn't broken, its tarnished and its easily rectified. When silver is exposed to the air it reacts with oxygen, the consequence is tarnish, a completely natural reaction and if you check out my care guide you'll see some tips on how to clean your silver jewellery to remove the tarnish and make it look beautiful again.
The first step before you put any silver away is to make sure it is completely dry. Moisture speeds up the tarnishing process and a necklace against your skin will pick up moisture, rings might have some moisture from hand washing and so on. Super easy solution is to give your jewellery a wipe over with a soft cloth to remove anything that might be on the surface before putting it away.
Where to store your jewellery
Where you store it matters too. You will notice that lots of jewellery boxes are felt lined, not just because felt is soft and less likely to damage the surface of your jewellery, but because felt also absorbs moisture, which will help prevent tarnish whilst your silver is not being worn. Don't have a felt lined jewellery box, you could wrap each piece in a polishing cloth, this would also help minimise tarnish. You can also buy anti tarnish paper to pop with your jewellery, these absorb pollutants from the air to minimise your jewellery's opportunity to react (you do need to replace these often as they can only soak up so much pollutant).
Try to keep each piece separate from one another to avoid tangling or damaging. Silver and gold are soft metals and can scratch having each piece separate will minimise contact. If you have stones in any of your pieces you don't want those to scratch or to scratch other items.
Pearls like to be different
If you own pearls these will definitely need to be separate from all of your other jewellery. Pearls should ideally be stored in silk or satin as they are even more susceptible to being scratched. Pearls are organic and contain small amounts of water, because of this they can dry out if stored in too dry an environment causing them to turn yellow and become brittle; make sure you don't store them in an air tight enviorment.
Travelling
A great idea for when you are travelling with jewellery is to use a jewellery roll. These are compact and keep each item of jewellery seperate. Being small you can easily store them in the hotel safe which is always the best option when your away, it also means whilst travelling to your destination you can keep the roll close to your person.
Keep it secret, keep it safe
Last tip; once you have found how you want to store your jewellery, pop it somewhere safe; avoid it being in obvious sight to people outside your home. You really don't want to advertise to the world where you keep it. I would also make sure you have it insured, metals are constantly going up in value and it will likely cost more to replace the item, than it cost you to buy it. Not to mention the sentimental value that can never be recovered if someone does have sticky fingers.
I hope these few tips have given you some help or at least food for thought! Do you have any other tips I have missed, let me know!