Here’s Why You Should Put a Ball of Aluminum Foil in Your Dishwasher While Loading

Picture a kitchen where a roll-out drawer or a cabinet has just been stocked with a batch of new cutlery. However, as time goes by, the cutlery begins to lose shine. A fork is dug into a slice of apple or a knife is slathered with dollops of butter or a spoon is repeatedly dipped in citric sauces. Some unkind chemicals in foods leave stubborn settlings on these clinking silver instruments. Even when the cutlery is bathed in a dishwasher and left in the open to dry, the water clings to the cutlery, creating water spots that dull the shine.

This pressing dilemma prompted some people to discover an unusual hack that would save their beloved silverware from getting eaten up by noxious chemicals. The hack, dubbed the “aluminum foil hack” was shared by Carolina McCauley (@mccauley) in the summer of 2021, and since then it has got TikTokers obsessed. McCauley promised that this hack would leave your silverware “sparkling.”

As the video opens, McCauley takes a sheet of silver tinfoil and crumples it into the size of a crazy ball. She tosses the foil ball inside the dishwasher basket that contains cutlery items. In the next frame, she shows a set of spoons shining like new. The comments section of McCauley's video was filled with people pondering the science behind this shine-revival trick. @ascenithgames said that the trick could work because “there's a hack to clean tarnished silverware by boiling baking soda with aluminum foil and soaking.” This is exactly the reason Ken Long (@ken.c.long) describes in a TikTok video endorsing the foil hack.

“The combination of aluminum foil, dishwasher tab, and hot water creates a chemical reaction that lifts silver sulfide (tarnish),” Long wrote in the caption of his video. Like McCauley, he also demonstrated the same method: scrunching an aluminum foil into a ball, stashing it in the dishwasher basket alongside a dishwasher tab, and starting the dishwasher on a normal setting. The resulting shine on the cutlery was “spotless,” he said.

Elsewhere, Lucy Kalice (@lucykalice) tested this “aluminum foil hack” and concluded that she was “pretty impressed.” After tossing a foil ball in her dishwasher, she noticed that her cutlery looked extra sparkly. A knife that always came out with a tarnished surface was also glinting bright. In another TikTok video, when Arnie Negrete (@arnienegrete) tested the hack on a tarnished fork, he came out screaming, “Holy moly! It actually works.” However, unlike Ken, Arnie set the dishwasher machine on a “power wash” setting. Also, he used three foil balls to do the job.

The science behind this hack is fairly simple. An aluminum foil though, has nothing to do with silverware, the trick is to trigger a chemical reaction called “ion exchange,” as Lee Gilbert, founder of Ransom Spares, told Reader’s Digest. The “ion exchange occurs when the warm water, detergent, and the cutlery in the dishwasher come into contact with each other,” he explained. “This reportedly helps remove watermarks and tarnish, leaving cutlery sparklingly clean.” Apparently, aluminum foil is also known to remove tarnish from silver articles, which makes it obvious why this hack has worked with so many people.

Rochelle Wilkinson, owner of Dirt Detective Cleaning, pointed out that another reason could be a little-known fact about dishwashers. Many dishwasher pods come with a secret ingredient: baking soda. When a chemical reaction occurs between foil, baking soda, and silverware, the magic happens and the glimmery shine suddenly returns. Looking forward, people now have this magic trick to restore the shine of other silver articles including jewelry, utensils, and ornaments.

You can follow Carolina McCauley (@carolina.mccauley), Lucy Kalice (@lucykalice), Ken Long (@ken.c.long), and Arnie Negrete (@arnienegrete) on TikTok for more videos from their channels!