Your gold jewelry is handcrafted to last your lifetime and the lifetimes of your heirs. If you take good care of it, the lustrous glow and shine will last for centuries. Here are some tips on keeping your treasured items shining and brilliant as the years go by.

• Always remove your good jewelry before doing any hard physical work. A bracelet or chain can snag on something and break a link. Dirt can grind into cracks and can scuff the finish. Remove bracelets and rings before washing dishes or scrubbing the car.
  
  
• Speaking of washing, please do not ever leave your rings, chains or earrings beside the kitchen or bathroom sink. Too often, they are inadvertently bumped and fall down the drain. You might look everywhere else for them and never think about the drain. (The heavy gold always lodges in the sink trap, so recovery is relatively simple.)
  
  
• Use a fine polishing cloth to rub jewelry and bring back the shine. Do not use cotton towels or any form of paper tissue, because they contain stiff fibers that can scratch the soft metal.
  
  
• Protect your investments with a proper jewelry box that has dividers to keep the items apart. The compartments prevent the jewelry pieces from scratching each other. The soft fabric liner in the compartments also prevents scratching. You could keep jewelry in a plain box, but if you do this, you should wrap the items separately in soft cloth or plain unscented tissue.
  
  
• Traveling with jewelry presents packing problems too. Many of the small feminine tote bags have soft velvet pads and compartments especially for pins and bracelets. Again, the idea is to protect the gold from rubbing against anything hard.
  
  
• You can bring along a small quantity of jewelry cleaner liquid, in a tight-sealing bottle, to restore the shining brilliance before an evening out on the town.
  
  
  
• You can buy good jewelry cleaner liquids in any of the better department stores. There are different cleaners for gold and silver. The gold cleaners work equally well on yellow, white and rose gold.
  

• Consider investing in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner that removes deeply embedded grime from joints and crevices.