How To Clean Seashells

How To Easily Clean Your Seashells

I have found some seashells that I’d like to use for some craft projects, but they are definitely in need of a good cleaning.  I’ll show you how to easily clean your seashells.

Supplies To Clean Your Seashells

• Shells you’d like to clean
• 3 containers or buckets for cleaning (one with bleach/water, one with soapy water and one with just water to rinse)
• Bleach
• Dish Soap
• Old toothbrushes or snag some from dollar store
• Garbage bags or drop cloth
• Paper towels
• Disposable gloves

All of these supplies other than the cool collapsable bucket, I found at the Dollar Store, but you might already have most of these at home.  I use these white containers from the dollar store for a lot of different projects.

Setting Up Your Space To Clean Your Seashells

Cover your workspace in trash bags or a drop cloth.

Mix about 1 part bleach to 2 parts water in one of your containers.

You can go up to equal parts bleach and water if the shells have a lot of algae or discoloration on them. But my more watered down version worked just fine!

In your next container mix warm water with a little bit of dish soap.

Fill your third container with water to rinse the soap off your shells.

Lay out paper towels for the shells to dry on.

Get scrubbing – Clean Your Seashells

Add your seashells to the bleach and water mixture and let them soak for about an hour.

To really clean the seashells, use an old toothbrush to scrub the sand, algae and dirt from the shell.

Then dunk the shell in your container of soapy water.

Next move the shell into the clean water to rinse off any soap.

Lay out the shells on paper towels to dry.