How to clean tarnish off vintage stainless steel cutlery
Standard home cleaning methods like baking soda, foil, and vinegar often fail to remove tarnish from older pieces. This leaves people wondering if the discoloration is permanent, preventing them from using the cutlery as decorative items.
Overview
People affected2 accounts across 1 forum
Workarounds found2 items attempted
Community agreement97 total upvotes
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
2 items+ Contribute
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Using the foil, baking soda, hot water, and salt method followed by wiping with vinegarDid this help you?
- 2Using general chemical suggestions to look for local equivalents in shopsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
r/CleaningTips2 people · September 2026
“I really like these and have used the foil, baking soda hot water and salt method, then wipe with vinegar, no luck :(”source ↗
Classic-Cry8920 · r/CleaningTips · 95 upvotes
Where this came up
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