Sterling silver jewelry will oxidize very quickly if it is left exposed to the elements. Intricate pieces of all metals will quickly pick up dust and soot from the air and lose their detailed craftmanship under the dirt, and many stones and pearls can easily be affected by changes in temperature, humidity and exposure to sunlight over time. Safety suggests that keeping all your jewelry out on a display stand and exposed to all to see is not the best idea. Do you really trust every single person who enters your home THAT much that you would leave your diamond studs laying around or your grandmother's pearl choker on a pedestal, waiting for sticky fingers to come by?

Invest in a well crafted and well thought out jewelry box and you will never regret it. Make sure there are multiple levels, slots for rings, boxes of different sizes to keep different size earrings together, and larger spaces for bangles and cuffs. It should be long enough ines width to lay your necklaces down flat if they are easily tangled.

Use tiny zip lock backs liberally. EVERY jewelry store on earth uses them behind the scenes to keep things organized and clean long term for storage until it's time to display the piece. For sterling silver jewelry, zip lock bags are critical to long term maintenance. Put a piece of sterling in a zip lock, put a strip of anti-tarnish paper inside the bag, push all the air out before you close it, and then drop it in a jewelry box with a lid that closes tightly. You can rest assured that 20 years from now that piece of jewelry will still look brand new. That same piece will be black from tarnish in 3 months on a beautiful but nonfunctional stand and if you don't clean it regularly will soon be so dirty you will never wear it again.

This is even more true for 14K Gold vermeil, which turns ugly brown very quickly if you don't keep it sealed up. Even solid gold benefits from being kept sealed; it keeps dust and particulate matter in the air (soot, oil, perfume, etc.) from attaching to the metal and dulling the shine over time. Anyone who has worn a gold piece for years will know exactly what I mean; it just gets dull and needs to be cleaned once in a while to return it to that classic warm glow. Leaving gold out on a counter does exactly the same thing. With the price of gold these days, that would truly be criminal!