How to clean and store everything

Nobody buys a toy feeling excited about the aftercare. But the five minutes afterwards are the difference between something you still like using in two years and something you quietly bin in eight months.

One rule above all the others: the instructions that came with the thing beat everything below, including everything below.

The basic wash

Warm water and a mild unscented soap. Rinse properly, because residue left on a surface is exactly what you will feel next time. Dry it fully with something that does not shed lint.

Every time, not just the memorable times. And before first use as well, because it has been in a warehouse.

Anything with a motor

Check the rating before it goes anywhere near a tap. Splashproof means a damp cloth and nothing more. Fully waterproof means you can rinse it properly. Get that wrong once and the toy is finished.

Never submerge anything with a charging port unless the box explicitly says you can. Dry the port completely before it goes on charge, and never charge something that is still damp.

Silicone

Warm soapy water, and that is genuinely it.

Do not boil it and do not put it in the dishwasher unless the maker says you can. Heat can distort it, and a dishwasher tablet is far harsher than anything you want on a surface that goes inside you.

Silicone attracts lint like nothing else on earth, so dry it and bag it rather than leaving it in a drawer to collect the drawer.

Glass and steel

The easiest things here. Soapy water, rinse, dry.

With glass, run your fingers over the whole surface before every use and retire it the moment you find a chip or a crack. With steel, essentially nothing goes wrong, which is most of its appeal.

Where to keep it

Dry first, always. Damp things put away in a drawer is how you end up with a smell that never quite leaves.

Store pieces separately rather than touching. Two silicone toys pressed against one another for months can react and mark each other permanently. A bag each, cotton or whatever pouch it arrived in, solves it completely.

Somewhere cool and out of direct sunlight. And take the batteries out of anything that uses them if it is going away for a season.

The four things that actually kill toys

Boiling or dishwashing something that was never rated for it. Silicone lube on a silicone surface. Storing things damp, or storing two silicone pieces touching. Water in a charging port.

That is very nearly the complete list.

When to let something go

A chip or crack in glass. A tear, a soft sticky patch, or a smell in silicone that washing will not shift. Any motor that has been properly wet.

None of those are fixable, and all of them are worth replacing rather than risking. Why a damaged surface matters is in what body safe actually means.