Cleaning Coral

 If you have Coral in your home as part of your coastal look,then is another thing. I was horrified  to see all the dust that had collected on them.Ummm.....they weren't exactly white anymore.For the life of me I couldn't figure out how I was going to get a a couple of these beauties whiten you know it needs to be kept clean..I love the several White Coral Skeletons that I  own, but keeping them clea again.I figured a can of  compressed air would do the trick.. I am sure I am not the first person to come up with this idea, and if anyone else has a better one I would love to know, but this worked superb!





 






It got into all the little porous holes as well, on this piece.





Sorry about the photo's

 

 This piece required more work, gross huh? This was in an apothecary jar and yes it is grey! I used the air and  got off what I could which wasn't much, so I got out my multipurpose tooth brush and scrubbed it under some warm water, added a mild dish soap and began scrubbing.  It looked a little better but not much. So I got out the bleach..... I mixed equal parts bleach and warm water, let it soak for a minute or two and scrubbed, let it soak a bit  more and repeated a few times. This is how it turned out.



It's white again! I don't know how good the bleach was for it, but word to the wise, don't let your coral get that dirty to begin with.

 

I wanted to polish some of my shells also. You can do this with a soft cloth and Mineral Oil, and it will bring back the luster to a lot of them.

I would love to hear any ideas of suggestions you might have !