You probably have already cleaned your house from top to bottom, rearranged drawers and cupboards, cleaned out your closet, put your books by alphabetical order, matched your Tupperware, planted a garden, cut your hair (and regretted it) and tried new recipes as if you were a finalist on Master Chef. Now what? Worry not. We have one last task for you before we are let out of our lockdown so you can shine as you are meant to: get all your jewellery out and go through it, sort it, clean it and pamper it.

Cleaning Your Jewellery

Jewellery with pearls is best cleaned with a soft cloth. It is advised that you should avoid all exposure to water (do not shower or bath whilst wearing them) and chemicals (hairspray, perfume, and beauty products). It is advised that pearl necklaces should be restrung annually. Jewellery with jade, coral, turquoise, opal, malachite, lapis lazuli, and any other porous gemstones are NOT to be cleaned with anything other than warm soapy water. Porous soft stones that should not be cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner or soaked in jewellery cleaner solutions.

For a list of gemstones and their particular cleaning care you can go here: https://www.gemsociety.org/article/care-maintenance-gemstones/

Ultrasonic cleaners clean jewellery with sound waves that vibrate the pieces to remove dirt. However, they can also cause serious damage to gemstones, so we advise avoiding them unless your jeweller has told you it’s safe to use on that specific piece. (NEVER ON EMERALDS!)

Silver Jewellery Tip

To keep your silver jewellery from tarnishing, store it with some silica packs. Now you have a new use for those silly little packets that come at the bottom of your purses or shoe boxes. You are welcome. Also, never wear silver jewellery when you go swimming or at the sauna.

Keep gold jewellery separately from silver jewellery. Gold scratches easily, so keep them in individual soft cloth bags. Keep chains fastened so that they don’t get tangled up. You need to be especially careful with pearls, which are soft and will scratch more easily than gems and metals. Hang on to boxes, bags, and wraps that your jewellery comes in, they’re often the best way to store your jewellery in order to protect pieces from damage and dirt.

Wearing Your Jewellery

We know you know how to wear jewellery but here are a few more bits of advice to help reduce wear and tear:

Put jewellery on after applying makeup, perfume, and hair products. Handle gems and pearls as little as possible; the natural oils on your skin can dull the stone. Remove bracelets and rings if you’re doing any manual labour, including housework. Remove earrings when your hair is being styled, to keep them from getting caught on combs or brushes. And never wear pearl earrings or necklaces when you’re having your hair coloured – the chemicals can damage the pearls’ sheen.

Professional Care

A professional should check jewellery for damage or wear on a regular basis. Make sure you have a detailed insurance valuation for your jewellery. As a rough guide, the description in a professional jewellery valuation will be detailed enough that a jeweller could use it to draw a pretty accurate sketch of the item. Arent you glad that Covett takes care of all this, so you only have to worry about what to wear it with?

The Covett team wish you a safe return to your routine, and while we take care of your jewellery, you make sure to take care of you, so you can sparkle as much as your best-loved jewellery!

You probably have already cleaned your house from top to bottom, rearranged drawers and cupboards, cleaned out your closet, put your books by alphabetical order, matched your Tupperware, planted a garden, cut your hair (and regretted it) and tried new recipes as if you were a finalist on Master Chef. Now what? Worry not. We have one last task for you before we are let out of our lockdown so you can shine as you are meant to: get all your jewellery out and go through it, sort it, clean it and pamper it.