How to Care for Crystals: A Simple Crystal Care Guide

INSIDE: If you want to enjoy the beauty and healing benefits of crystals and minerals long term, you need to understand crystal care. This guide will tell you what you need to know!

Crystals are precious and semi-precious gemstones that each have certain beneficial properties. Most of them are minerals, and each of them have their own molecular compounds and specific vibrations.

Knowing how to care for crystals is essential if you're going to engage in crystal healing and even if you just want to enjoy their beauty long term. 

Let's get started with the Mohs hardness scale, which provides us with a starting point for crystal care...

The Mohs Hardness Scale & How it Relates to Crystal Care

The Mohs hardness scale is a very useful tool to use when dealing with crystals. It provides us with a basic guide for how to care for crystals and the general do's and don’ts associated with them. 

This scale was created in 1812 by German mineralogist, Friedrich Mohs.

He used ten stones to range them from the softest known mineral (talc) to the hardest (diamond) in order to create a scale that would allow us to test the hardness of all other specimens.

The scale is based on the ability of one mineral to scratch the surface of another mineral.

You can use it as a general guide on which crystals to keep in a separate holder, and which you can keep together without the fear for their surface being scratched.

But you can also use the Mohs scale to determine if a crystal can be placed in water. 

How to Care for Crystals: From Sunlight to Water

Once we’ve found ourselves well-furnished and supplemented with crystals of our choosing, it’s very important to know how to care for crystals so that they will continue working for us. 

Certain crystals can be cleansed under running water, or salt water, or water in general, while others can’t.

Some crystals can be left to sit in the sun, while others most certainly cannot.

And some crystals will scratch easily, while others won't.

Crystals That Shouldn’t Be Exposed to Water

The crystals that can become damaged if placed in water include:

• Selenite
• Lepidolite
• Fluorite
• Amber
• Larimar
• Lapis Lazuli
• Hematite
• Obsidian
• Opal
• Rhodonite
• Sodalite
• Apatite
• Chrysocolla
• Kyanite

These stones are all a 5 and under on the Mohs scale, making them too brittle to be placed in water. It can make them crack or dissolve.

Crystals That Shouldn't Be Exposed to Sunlight

The crystals that shouldn’t be exposed to sunlight include:

• Rose Quartz
• Amethyst
• Citrine
• Fluorite
• Opal
• Aquamarine
• Smoky Quartz
• Clear Quartz

These crystals shouldn't be in the sun because it fades their beautiful colors. Clear Quartz is the exception here, however, it shouldn't be exposed to sunlight either because it can cause it to become brittle.

Crystals That Are Very Fragile

The crystals that require extra care include:

• Opal
• Selenite
• Fluorite
• Turquoise
• Kyanite
• Azurite
• Celestite
• Amber
• Any Crystal Point

These crystals are quite soft and are therefore very fragile. They should be handled with care.

Clearing & Cleansing Crystals

Regular clearing and cleansing of crystals is very important because it keeps them functioning optimally. 

Crystals are constantly absorbing negative energies in our environment, which is part of why they are so beneficial to us.

But, since that is the case, we need to cleanse that energy out so that we can continue enjoying their benefits.

If they get thrown out of whack due to the misbalance in energy in which they were kept, they won’t be able to attune us to the purpose we originally wanted. 

That’s why an important part of crystal care is regular crystal cleansing, which serves to reset them back to their original, natural vibration.

It's like setting a computer back to its factory settings in order to remove glitches and virus. 

Safe Ways to Cleanse Crystals

Some of the safest ways to cleanse crystals include:

• Smoke (Smudging) - Just hold your crystal over the smoke until you feel it has had enough. This is considered to be “basic” crystal care.
• Sound (Tibetan bowls, tuning forks, binary sounds, bells, vocal tuning) - This method is awesome because it allows you to cleanse all of your crystals at once. Just place all of them in the room where you’ll have a sound ceremony and you can enjoy a healing sound bath together with your crystals. 
• Water (make sure you know which crystals can be placed in water) - Crystals that can go under water can be placed in a ceramic bowl, or a plastic container for anywhere between an hour to 24 hours. You can even pour ocean water over them and leave them be. 
• Reiki - If you are a Reiki Master, simply holding your crystal and giving it Reiki can cleanse it.
• Intent - Believe it or not, our intentions are one of the most potent powers we have. This is because everything is energy and the energy of our thoughts are vibrations, just like crystals are. Simply intending that your crystals cleanse themselves can do the trick if your belief is strong enough.

Cleanse your crystals once every ten days to relieve them of any chaotic or problematic energy that they might’ve picked up.

If they were exposed to turbulent energy or a lot of unpleasant events during the week, it would be best to cleanse them once a week with smudging.

Storing Crystals

Crystal care doesn’t end with their regular cleansing. We also need to mind how and where we store them. There are two basic rules when it comes to knowing how to store your crystals:

1. Crystals that aren’t supposed to stay in the sun should be stored in a darker place in our homes or in places where the direct sunlight doesn’t reach.
2. Crystals that aren’t supposed to be exposed to water should stay away from damp places. 

Learning how to take care of crystals is a very important part of the crystal-owning process because it allows us to benefit from their healing vibration much longer.

Additional Crystal Care Tips

Sun and water aren’t the only elements that we should be mindful of when we’re exercising crystal care. Here are a couple other crystal care tips to keep in mind:

• Separate soft from hard crystals, so that the softer crystals don't get scratched by the harder crystals.
• Place hard crystals on soft surfaces so that they can keep their clear and shiny surface for a long time.

Now that we’ve learned our basic crystal care, we can go on to enjoy their many benefits for many years to come.