Wash It Once Before You Ever Use It

By GETAUVE Editorial Team · Published October 4, 2026

Wash It Once Before You Ever Use It: A Ten-Minute Flow

Ten minutes, start to finish: soap, warm water, dry it, done. Here's the flow, then the reason for each step.

A new toy picks up dust and residue in the factory and the box. This gives you a ten-minute wash routine that removes it without damaging the silicone, plus the three things people do wrong.

The Short Answer

Wash it once before the first use, and keep it simple: mild unscented soap, warm water, 30 to 60 seconds, hands only, then dry it completely with a lint-free cloth. Don't boil it, don't use alcohol, don't put it in the dishwasher. That's the whole routine, and it's the same one you'll use every time after. If you take one thing from this: dry matters as much as wash, because a damp toy near a charging port is how devices die in week one.

The Ten-Minute Flow

Run it in this order and you won't have to redo anything.

• Fill the sink with warm water, not hot. Add a drop of mild unscented soap.
• Rinse the body for 10 seconds to knock off loose dust.
• Soap it with your hands for 30 seconds. Fingertips, no nails, no pressure.
• Rinse for another 20 seconds until there's no slip left on the surface.
• Keep the port, the pins, and any seam with an opening away from the stream.
• Pat it dry with a lint-free cloth, then leave it on the towel for 5 minutes.

That's it. Eight of those ten minutes are waiting for it to dry, and you don't need to stand there.

Say you're doing this at 10 p.m. with a sink half full of dishes. Clear a space first. You don't want to rinse a new toy in a sink that just held dinner.

Why Warm, Not Hot

Picture this: it's late, the tap's running as hot as it goes, and it feels more thorough. It isn't. Body-safe silicone handles warm fine and gets tacky and softer at high heat over time, and a shell that's gone slightly soft won't seal the way it did. Warm tap water — the temperature you'd wash your face in — does the job.

If your toy has a warming feature, this matters twice over. You don't want to find out the shell deforms by deforming it.

Why Hands Only

Washcloths and dish sponges carry grit, and grit is what puts micro-scratches in a smooth surface. Once a silicone surface is scratched, it holds onto residue that a rinse won't lift, and you've created a cleaning problem for yourself that didn't exist an hour ago.

Your hands are softer than any cloth and you can feel what you're doing. Use them.

Why Dry Is Half the Job

A damp toy goes two places: into a drawer, where it picks up lint, or onto a charger, where moisture near the port causes corrosion. Neither shows up immediately. Both show up around week three, and by then you'll blame the product.

Give it 5 minutes on a towel after you pat it down. If you're in a hurry, that's the one step worth not skipping.

One more thing. If it goes into a closed pouch, wait the full 5 minutes. A closed container plus a damp toy is how things start growing in there.

What Not to Use

Skip anything with alcohol, bleach, or essential oils in it. Skip antibacterial hand soap with fragrance and dye — the fragrance is the problem, not the cleaning. Skip the dishwasher and the microwave, both of which people have genuinely tried. Skip boiling unless the manual explicitly says the shell can take it, and most don't.

And don't share a toy between partners without a barrier. That's not a hygiene opinion, it's the standard advice.

People have put these in dishwashers and microwaves. Both wreck the shell. If you've ever been curious, that's your answer, and it's a mistake you only get to make once.

When You Can Skip Most of This

Honest trade-off: the ten minutes is the annoying part, and on a busy night it's genuinely easy to talk yourself out of it. If you're short on time, the compressed version is a 20-second rinse and a proper dry, and that beats nothing.

You can skip the full flow entirely if you're washing a toy that's been through it once already and has sat in a closed drawer since. And if you own a toy with a fully sealed, IPX7-rated body, the "keep the port dry" worry mostly disappears — the rest still applies. Don't buy a second wash product for this. Soap and water is the answer.

Sources

• Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States — plain-language guidance on cleaning body-safe materials.
• International Electrotechnical Commission — maintains IPX7 and related water-ingress ratings used on rechargeable devices.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration — general consumer guidance on cleaning products intended for skin contact, referenced here without implying device approval.

This article is general education about product care and isn't medical advice. See a licensed clinician for any persistent irritation or health concern.