Care and Maintenace of Your Chandelier
You’ve been putting it off for months now. Or even longer. You glance up at the chandelier that hangs majestically over your dining room, and the glass crystal jewels have lost their shine. The luster is dull and unattractive. Those glass crystals no longer sparkle when you first flip the switch. The grime and dirt and gunk and grease of the hot summer days and long winter months is starting to show up on your beautiful fixture.
But you also realize that cleaning it could potentially be a major undertaking. You think about hiring or ordering one of your kids to do it, then realize that he’ll break something if he’s left with the glass alone for too long. So, then you decide to break down and grab a rag to clean it yourself. Okay, where do you start?
Plan out what you want to do first. You’ll need a step ladder, a drop cloth, a bucket of fairly warm water, some mild detergent (what you use for dishes should be fine for the crystal jewels), metal polish and/or an all purpose cleaner, a drying towel, and a rag or two. Perhaps the quickest way of cleaning all of those pieces is to take them off the actual chandelier first and let them soak in the water.
If your chandelier has glass crystal jewels, you can use warmer water than if you have plastic crystals. Water is your best friend and will take most of the manual labor out of your cleaning schedule.
Now that the crystal pieces are soaking in the bucket of water, you have more open space to clean the stems and the metal. Clean the metal well. Be thorough. Step off the ladder and take a look at your job before you rehang the jewels. Take your time as you don’t want a wise guy to remark, “you missed a spot.” They will anyhow, but you can lessen that possibility with this step.
Now comes the fun part. With your rag, clean each jewel separately and place them on the towel. After you have a dozen or so, dry each one so that they’ll shine like they were new, then hang them (or wait to hang them altogether). If you hang a few at a time, you’ll get more of a sense of accomplishment.
By the time you’re done cleaning all of the individual pieces and have rehung them, your bucket of water should be very dirty. To prevent this grime buildup in the future, you will need to spend a few minutes a week dusting the chandelier. That’s it, only a few minutes.
Dust that fixture and you’ll keep the brilliance and sparkle of your glass jewel crystals (as well as the metal stems). It’ll look clean and fresh, like you’ve spent hours cleaning and polishing the chandelier weekly. No one needs to know the truth.