Before & After

I’ve been playing around this weekend with some of the formulas for cleaning the pieces of china that I bought at auction last week. After some serious scrubbing with vinegar and salt, the smell of which gagged me, and then with a paste of baking soda and water, I realized that they don’t work too well. I went back to my life philosophy: Better Living Through Chemicals! {kidding}.

One of the pieces was in much worse shape than all of the others. The image on the left is the piece as I bought it at auction. The image on the right is after an all-day soak with a paste of Soft Scrub® with bleach. There is a marked improvement after this process.

Before

After Soft Scrub

 

Next, I pulled out the Oxyclean® and tried that. I filled the bowl with water and added about an eighth of a cup of powdered Oxyclean, mixed it up so it all dissolved, and let it sit for several hours.  You can see that almost all of the staining, except for the big stain on the left, which actually almost looks like a burn mark, is gone. And that stain on the left is reduced considerably. There’s a fold in the lower right, but that almost as much of a shadow than discolouration. I’ve got this piece soaking again so I can see if I can get rid of some of the staining around the rim, and on the reverse side.

I am pretty pleased with the outcome of this experiment!