Clean-up Trick #1

So, you have amazing and exciting junk–unfortunately, sometimes someone threw it into a nasty hole, or into the road before it found you, and it needs a little love before it will shine.  Tip number one deals with a very common restorative item: toothpaste.

I’ll give you an example.  The glossy, brilliant red piece of pseudo leather above got my hands filthy just by carrying the roll of the stuff I found home (above is a piece I cut and cleaned just for you all).  What I did was rinse it off (no big secret there) and then I took an old toothbrush (DON’T use your roomate’s current toothbrush, no matter how good it might feel at the time, it will come back to haunt one of you) and some toothpaste and scrubbed it for around a minute.  This not only gave it a bit of a shine, but it also took most of the scuffmarks out of it.  Then rinse it off and you are good to go.

This also works to restore tarnished jewelry–especially sterling silver.  I would hesitate to use it on jewelry that has jewels in it–you could end up losing the gem and that would ruin your day/week/life.  (Perhaps I exaggerate…)

Well, why are you still reading?  Get to it!