How To Clean Sex Toys:
The Ultimate Sex Toy Cleaning Guide

Written by: Don Watson | Updated: January 8th, 2019

After experiencing your post-climax bliss, it’s more than important to clean up the mess, and most importantly, the device you used to make it. Otherwise, you’ll be in danger and at the risk of getting a yeast infection or a disgusting bacterial infection. Nothing to worry about though. Follow these germ-free techniques and you will be perfectly safe.

First off, when you get a toy, find out what it’s components are made of, since the material and the presence of a motor will be a crucial factor in how you’ll need to wash it. You can find this information on the packaging of the product, or if not you’ll likely need to do some research on the product and search online if possible.

Now with the context of this article, you will have all of the information needed to cleanse and sanitize your arsenal of sex toys and stay away from the risk of contracting any unsanitary diseases.

A few tips before we go into the details of how to clean your toys:

The sanitation of your sex toys is important, and maintaining sanitation is crucial for your own and your partner’s well-being. One should be very aware, especially when it comes down to the health and vulnerability of your sexual partners. To begin your trip towards sanitation, one should only use sex toys with other partners that could be sanitized, or sex toys that can be covered in a condom or any form of protection.

Things to take care of prior to using your toy:

Before you take out and use your toy, you should take a look and visually inspect the toy to make sure there are no breakages that could host rotten delicate tissue or host bacteria that could create a culture that could be lethal. Also, you should make sure there are no stains or pet fur that could also harbor bacteria. You should smell it and taste it and make sure nothing is off from the usual. You would know if anything weird is happening.

How to Clean Silicone Sex Toys

Many sex toys are made of silicone. Which makes them feel great, and also super easy to clean.

You can typically clean silicone toys with just good ol’ fashioned soap and water. However, over time if you use strong dish soap or household soap, you may begin to degrade the quality of the silicone over time. Thus lowering the lifespan of your toy.

For this reason, I personally use Shibari Toy Cleaner which I buy on Amazon for like $10.

Other types of toys and methods of sanitization

If it’s Cyberskin you can use only a little bit of soap and warm water to sterilize it. Too much cleaning could damage the sensitive material permanently, which would be a shame because it is an expensive piece of sexual equipment.

If it’s made of hard plastic, elastomer, thermoplastic elastomer (TPR), or jelly rubber then these porous products can still have a lot of bacteria and STD viruses after a good wash with soap and water. It would be better to use a condom or any form of protection if you’re going to have a partner on with you in your session, which is on par with what Kerr advises. What must be stressed on though, is unless the product states otherwise, TPR is porous. Porous toys have a higher propensity to give yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, and bring to your genitals the effects of harsh chemicals and material.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any cleaning method that is readily available to sanitize these toys and make them usable or safe. Because these toys are usually not sanitized, a simple soap and water wash is the best you can do. Also, sex toys that are sold as bacteria resistant sex toys will not help you here either. These sex toys can only ever take care of the shallow surface, but the bacteria is developing cultures and is making a home in the pores of the toy. Despite what some sex toy companies and home sex toy franchises will tell you, sex toy cleaners are a huge gimmick when used on materials like those mentioned above. Condoms are a must when using these toys, but aren’t really a guarantee for safety. My advice would be to only use polyurethane type condoms because latex condoms are useless at this point. Ideally, the condom should fully cover the body of the toy in order to be functional.

As for jelly products, there is no reason not to use silicone-based sex toys. They are much safer in comparison to the alternatives. The reason why oil-based products are not safe is that the toy is heavily composed of an oil-based softener which can cause allergic reactions.

The next type we will look into is fleshlights. We’ve written an in-depth article on how to clean a fleshlight. To sum it up, Fleshlight states on their website and in their manuals to avoid the use of soap completely. They also preach the use of the rinse technique only. These products need to be fully dried before you store them, as they can grow mildew and form bacteria cultures. If water sanitization is not for you then you should go for rubbing alcohol, but if you still find a weird odor, then you should consider throwing out the toy for your own safety. You should also inspect the toy inside out of for black spots, which means mildew is growing and developing beyond the surface. At this point, it is not safe to play with this toy and should be thrown out.

The next type of product we will examine is the Tenga. Certain Tenga products, such as the 3D sleeves, are added with anti-microbial silver, which has a short life span but can fight off bacteria and molds from living in your sleeve. Tenga products should just be cleaned using soap and water.

Once your toy is clean, you can dry it the toy off completely with a clean paper towel or just let it air dry. After it’s dry, you should keep it in a safe case or silk bag to protect it from outside bacteria or germs that could infect the toy, rendering it dangerous.


There you have it, now you know how to clean your sex toys!

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