I may have gotten this idea from reading this thread, but I'm not sure. Someone mentioned Goo Be Gone for cleaning ornaments, and I started thinking about using something more gentle than that. I went through my bathroom cabinet and found some very light body oil made by Neutragena which I applied to a broken ornament with a very soft cloth. It worked great on a plain painted ball! I wiped off all the oil which cleaned the 1967 ornaments beautifully, but I haven't tried it on my more expensive ornaments. I have one Polish one that is damaged that I may eventually try out, so I'll let you know. I don't know why this would hurt if it is all wiped off, but since I don't know for sure, I've only tried it on one set of 25 ornaments. They still look great! The scary part was trying to hang on to them while cleaning the oil. That's a little tricky. The oil and cleaning cloth took off the gritty feeling and some of the cloudiness.