I love finding easy activities to do with Buddy that involve things I already have in my home. It makes me especially happy when I come across an activity that is also helpful or useful in some way. This cleaning pennies activity is a little bit of both.

We are going to Disney World later in the month, and I wanted to clean some pennies to use in the pressed penny machines. Buddy has loved doing these at zoos in the past, and I know there are a ton of different machines available at Disney World. I decided it would be fun to try some different methods to clean up the pennies and make them shiny and ready for pressing.

I read somewhere that you can use vinegar and salt or ketchup to clean off pennies. Buddy and I decided to try both methods to see what was easiest and worked the best. We started with ketchup because that seemed like it would be the most fun for Buddy.

We put a bunch of old pennies in a bowl, and Buddy squirted a bunch of ketchup on top of it. I also filled up a separate bowl with water. Buddy and I each took a penny, rubbed it in ketchup, wiped it off with a paper towel, and then dropped it into the water.

I thought it was kinda gross and sticky, but Buddy thought it was a lot of fun! It did an ok job of cleaning the pennies, but neither of us were impressed with the results. The pennies were shinier than they had started, but there was still a lot of dirt on them.

The next method we tried was using vinegar and salt. There are lots of sites with different information about this strategy, but they all suggest mixing 1/4 cup of vinegar with 1 teaspoon of salt. I doubled this recipe to have a little more liquid. One site suggested putting in 5 pennies at a time in the solution for 10 seconds, and then following with a rinse in water. So that was the second method we tried.

Buddy enjoyed all of the counting with this method. We’d count out five coins, and then count the 10 seconds. Then we’d rub them around in the salt, and then move to a new bowl of water. It took awhile, but Buddy seemed to have fun with this process.

After the second round of cleaning, the pennies looked even better. But there was still a lot of dirt on them! Buddy examined them and decided we should try one more thing.

I found a different website that recommended doing a longer soak in the vinegar, which made sense to me. It also said to put in a whole bunch of pennies, but to make sure that they weren’t overlapping on the bottom. We did the same vinegar solution, and this time we laid out all of the coins on the bottom. Then we set a timer for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, we took them out one at a time. Then we brushed them off with a tooth brush and put them into fresh water. When all of them were done, I put them in a metal colander and rinsed them thoroughly under running water.

After the third round of cleaning, we had many that were Disney World worthy. And some that still weren’t. It was a little frustrating to both of us. Fortunately, we had some other new and shiny pennies that we could add to our newly cleaned penny collection, and that was more than enough for what we needed.

Once everything was dried off, we filled our mini m&m container with two quarters and a penny alternating all the way to the top. I used a gold sharpie to add a little extra sparkle to it. We’re both excited to have all of our pennies ready to go for Disney World!