How to Clean Your Sex Toys (and How Often You Actually Need To)
By Zoey Unicorn · 6 min read
For most non-motorized body-safe toys, the answer is short. Warm water and a mild unscented soap after every single use, rinsed well, then dried completely before it goes back into storage. That covers 100% silicone, glass and stainless steel, which is the bulk of what I stock and the bulk of what I own. No special equipment, no routine to memorize. Things get more specific once you add a motor, a rechargeable battery or a porous material, and that is where nearly all of the confusion comes from.
Cleaning is not complicated, it is just inconsistent. People either overdo it with products that quietly damage the toy, or they skip it and then wonder why a favorite piece feels tacky a year later. What follows is the version I give customers in the shop, sorted by what your toy is actually made of.
The 60-second answer by material
100% silicone is the workhorse and the most forgiving. Warm water, a little unscented liquid soap, thirty seconds of actual rubbing with your hands, then a thorough rinse. If a toy is entirely non-motorized, solid, seamless silicone with no battery compartment and no electronics inside, you can go further and boil it for three to five minutes or run it on the top rack of the dishwasher with no detergent. I do that occasionally, not weekly. Soap and water is enough for regular use, and boiling is the reset for something that has been sitting unused for months.
Glass and stainless steel are the easiest materials to care for, which is a large part of why I like them. Both are non-porous, both handle heat, and solid undamaged borosilicate glass or surgical stainless can be boiled the same way. The habit worth building here is a visual check. Run your fingers over the surface and hold the piece up to good light before every use, looking for chips, cracks or rough spots. Anything chipped gets retired, not repaired.
ABS plastic shows up on hard vibrator handles, bullets and the rigid sections of otherwise silicone toys. It is non-porous and body safe, and it washes with the same warm water and mild soap. What it cannot take is heat. Boiling warps it, clouds it and can loosen the seals around whatever sits inside, so hot tap water is the ceiling and the dishwasher is out.
Porous materials are the honest exception. TPE, TPR, jelly, PVC blends and the soft skin-like materials sold as cyberskin have surfaces full of microscopic pores, which means they can be washed but cannot be fully sanitized. No amount of scrubbing changes that, because you cannot reach into the material itself. Wash them with mild soap, use a condom over them, keep them out of shared use, and replace them on a schedule rather than keeping them for years. My real recommendation is to buy non-porous when budget allows, and I put together a longer breakdown of body safe materials if you want the comparison.
Why soap and water is usually right
The reason plain soap works is mechanical more than chemical. Surfactants lift oils, lube residue and body fluids off a surface, and your hands rubbing the toy under running water do the rest. You are not sterilizing a surgical instrument on your bathroom counter. You are removing residue from a surface that has nowhere for residue to hide.
Rinsing matters as much as washing. Soap left behind is a common cause of irritation that people end up blaming on the toy, so rinse longer than feels necessary, particularly around ridges, seams, base flanges and suction openings. Textured pieces need attention down in the grooves, which is exactly where residue sits.
Dedicated toy cleaners are not required, though they earn their place in a few situations. Foaming cleaners are fast, they rinse clean, and they beat hauling a toy to the sink if you have roommates or you are traveling. I keep the unscented one in the nightstand, because fragrance is the first thing I cut from anything touching sensitive skin. Renewing powder is a different tool, meant to keep soft porous materials from turning tacky in storage.
What to Actually Clean Them With
What to never use on a toy
Rubbing alcohol is the first thing to leave out. It circulates as advice online constantly, and it slowly wrecks silicone, drying the surface until it goes chalky or sticky. Bleach belongs nowhere near a toy either, and it is close to impossible to rinse out of anything textured. Harsh antibacterial dish soap and scented body wash leave residue and are formulated for dishes or for skin rather than for the tissue these things touch. Anything abrasive, including scouring pads, baking soda scrubs and stiff brushes, turns a smooth non-porous surface into neither.
Silicone lubricant deserves its own note, because this one surprises people. Silicone bonds to silicone, so a silicone-based lube on a silicone toy can soften and pit the surface over time, leaving a gummy patch that no amount of washing removes. Water-based lube with silicone toys is the rule. If you love a silicone formula for skin, save it for glass, stainless or use a barrier, and reach for our water-based lubricants for everything silicone.
Motorized and rechargeable toys
A motor changes the rules. Never submerge a vibrator, wand or rechargeable toy unless the manufacturer explicitly rates it waterproof or submersible, and read that wording closely, because splashproof and water resistant are not the same claim. Water resistant generally means it survives a rinse. Waterproof generally means it can go under. If the box and the manual say nothing, treat it as not waterproof rather than assuming.
For anything without a submersion rating, wipe instead of wash. A cloth dampened with soapy water, then a second clean damp cloth to take the soap off, then a dry cloth. Keep the charging port dry the whole time, and keep water out of the seam where a cap or battery compartment closes. Magnetic contacts are more forgiving than pin-style ports, though neither appreciates sitting moisture. Let a toy dry fully before you plug it in.
Pull the batteries out of anything headed for long-term storage. A leaking battery takes out the toy and whatever else is in the drawer with it.
Drying and storing so you do not undo the work
All of that washing stops counting for much if a damp toy goes straight into a bag. Let things air dry completely on a clean towel, or dry them with a lint-free cloth, and give the base, the seams and any textured areas extra minutes, because those hold water long after the rest looks dry.
Store pieces separately, not touching. Different materials react with each other, and the classic outcome is two toys that were fine on their own fusing into a sticky mess wherever they made contact. Jelly and TPE are the worst offenders, though even silicone against silicone can turn tacky given time and pressure. Individual fabric pouches, small zip cases or a divided box solve it for very little money, and a dust-free bag matters too, since an open drawer means lint and pet hair on a surface going on your body.
A drawer full of loose toys pressed together is the setup I hear described most often, and the one I would change first. Materials sit against each other for months, buttons get pressed and drain batteries, glass knocks into stainless and chips. It is also why frequency has two answers. Clean after every use, without exception, and rinse and dry again before use if something has been sitting for weeks. That second wash is not about what happened last time. It is about what settled on it since.
Sharing toys and switching between uses
Sharing a toy with a partner is completely reasonable, and barriers make it simple. A condom over the toy, swapped when you switch between people, means nobody is relying on a rushed wash in the middle of things. That matters most with porous materials, where I treat a barrier as non-optional, and it is worth doing with any shared toy simply because it is faster than stopping to clean properly.
The same logic covers switching between types of use on one body. Anything used anally gets washed, or gets a fresh condom, before it goes anywhere else. If I had to pick one habit out of this post to prioritize, that is it, and it is part of why anal toys with flared bases and smooth non-porous surfaces are worth paying for.
Cleaning yourself is a shorter conversation than cleaning your toys. The outside gets washed and the inside takes care of itself, which is to say warm water is enough. A gentle pH-balanced wash on the vulva rather than inside it is fine if you like one, and wipes are for convenience and travel rather than a replacement for anything.
None of this needs to turn into a production. Warm water and mild unscented soap after every use, alcohol and bleach and abrasives kept away from your things, real respect for what a motor can and cannot handle, everything dried fully, and pieces stored so they are not touching. That is the whole routine, and it is the difference between a silicone toy you keep happily for a decade and one you quietly throw out after eight months.