10 Things to Avoid While Wearing a Wedding Ring
Posted by IRISH SEO
Maybe you’re asking yourself: who has a need for a silicone ring, and why?
Silicone rings are a bit different from your usual wedding bands in a couple of ways. In a nutshell, silicone rings allow you to do activities that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do while wearing a typical wedding ring. Maybe you already know a few of these, but few people actually know just how many ways that your ring (or even finger!) can be damaged wearing a regular wedding band.
Here are ten things you’ll want to avoid doing if you’d rather keep your wedding band on.
2. Cleaning the House
The cleaning chemicals found in household cleaning supplies will react to the metal of your wedding ring.
During the cutting process, diamonds are boiled in acid, which makes them resilient to cleaning chemicals. The metal of the ring, however, doesn’t go through the same process. Cleaning chemicals like bleach, acetone (found in nail polish) and chlorine (found in pools and hot tubs) can react with the metal and cause erosion.
Wearing gloves? This isn’t always an option. If you show up to a hot tub wearing nothing but your handy latex gloves, your friends are probably going to look at you funny. And while cleaning, wearing gloves may not be an option anyway, especially if you have a protruding (read: bulky) diamond sticking up.
3. Doing the dishes. There are a couple of reasons you’ll want to avoid doing the dishes while wearing a wedding ring. With the first, you can probably put two and two together: dish soap is often used when a ring is stuck on a finger because it serves as a lubricant. If your hands are submerged in dish soap, there’s a good chance that your wedding band is going to pop off. Guess what happens when a wedding band goes through a garbage disposal? You’re right – it’s not a pretty sight (or, rather, it’s not a pretty sound).
That’s the big reason. A couple of other reasons are, as with cleaning the house, cleaning chemicals can damage the metal of the ring. Not to mention, while you’re moving your hands around, you can also bump your ring on the dishes or sides of the sink, potentially damaging the band or dislodging the diamond.
4. Gardening. Soil could get stuck in the little crevices of your ring, which could cause scratches or other damage. Additionally, if your ring slides off, there’s a chance you might lose it even if you notice that it’s missing right after it slides off. If it’s buried and you’ve been moving around the yard? Nothing short of a major archaeological excavation is going to find your ring again, and even then your chances are iffy.
5. Water activities (or any activities that make your hands or body cold, for that matter). Anything that involves a boat, kayak, canoe, or one of those swan boats. Will the water damage the ring? Potentially, but that’s not the big problem here.
The big problem is something called vasoconstriction. This is basically a fancy word for what happens when your blood vessels constrict, which causes your fingers to decrease in size.
If you’re looking for a detailed reason, think of it this way: when your body is cold, it instinctually wants to protect the most important organs: the heart and the brain. Your body does this by drawing blood from the extremities and condensing it in the core (which is why frostbite often affects the fingers, toes, and nose).
When this happens, your fingers “deflate” so-to-speak. This happens frequently in water because body heat is sucked rapidly away from the body, but it can also happen in cold weather.
In short, if you’re wearing your wedding ring while kayaking or hiking a mountaintop, you’re asking to lose it.
6. Sleeping. Yup, sleeping. This one is pretty easy: what happens if you scratch your face in the middle of the night? That’s right – if you have a diamond on your ring, or even just an imperfection in the metal, you can give yourself an unsightly scratch.
7. Construction/Machinery. Any time you work with heavy machinery you’ll want to remove your wedding ring. This means any machinery you find at work, or even if you’re working with a wood lathe in the garage. Why? For the same reason as why you want to avoid sports: ring avulsion. Additionally, if your ring is made of metal, it’s also more like to conduct electricity. If you’ve ever heard someone say they’re “energized” by their relationship, this isn’t quite what they were talking about.
8. Baking. Just like with gardening, you run the risk of getting ingredients into the tiny crevices of your ring, which could damage it in the long term.
9. Using lotions or creams. Using lotions on your ring can leave residue, giving the ring a dull or dirty appearance. Worse, certain lotions can actually damage the band if it’s made of white gold or platinum, or if you have a colored gemstone.
10. Going to the gym. You can probably figure out why this is a bad idea: you’re lifting dumbbells and warp the shape of your ring from gripping the handles. Or, you take a bad step on the treadmill and take a tumble, meaning you’re dealing with the public humiliation AND the ring avulsion. The problem here? The gym is one of those age-old places people go to meet new potential partners, so ditching your wedding ring might open you up to more conversations than usual.
And you don’t have to replace your regular wedding ring. You could set your wedding band aside and just wear it on special occasions, or you could even switch back and forth between the two as you go through your routine.
The point to it all? Stay safe. Stay responsible. Your wedding band means the world to you. Make sure you’re taking care of it the way.
