Category: News

We love talking about getting down and dirty, but when it comes to keeping our sex toys nice and clean, we’re equally as obsessive!

The sex toys you buy are an investment in your sexual pleasure and treating them with care means they’ll last longer and perform better. But can you whack everything on the top shelf for a hot wash, or is keeping your collection clean more complicated than that? In the latest in our ‘How To…’ series, we get down and not so dirty with the do’s and don’ts of cleaning your sex toys…

The most important rule when it comes to keeping your sex toys spotless is to clean them before and after use. Particularly if you’re enjoying multiple sexual partners (lucky you!), all kinds of different bacteria can gather in the nooks and crannies of your sex toys, causing anything from yeast infections to UTIs and STIs. Not sexy, but easily avoidable with a quick clean using either mild soap, warm water and a damp cloth or a cleaning spray.

Sex toys are made from a range of different porous and nonporous materials: medical-grade silicone, jelly rubber, hard plastic, metal, leather, and pyrex. Particularly with porous sex toys, it’s important you keep them clean as a whistle. Porous materials can let all kinds of icky stuff through the toy’s outer membrane. If you don’t develop simple habits like disinfecting your toys after each use, they can quickly become breeding grounds for all kinds of nasty bacteria. Keeping a bottle of sanitising spray handy is an easy way to stay on top of things. Just pop it in your bedside cabinet next to your lube and you’re good to go. 

Take the Lelo Antibacterial Cleaning Spray. Killing 99.9% of all known germs, you might be tempted to use this in your bathroom and kitchen, but we wouldn’t recommend it. The bottle is beautifully stylish and contains a fast-acting alcohol and paraben-free formula. If you’re a size queen, then the System JO Antibacterial Foaming Sex Toy Cleaner might be the one for you. Its body-safe formula is perfect for anyone who has particularly sensitive skin, and its non-greasy formula is odourless and free from harsh chemicals like alcohol, parabens, and glycerin.

If you’re using leather to get up to no good, bear in mind that it’s one material that’s more porous than most. From dildo harnesses to BDSM cuffs and straps, clean your leather goodies using a washcloth, warm soapy water, and gentle soap, and wipe down any areas that have come into contact with bodily fluids.

Toys made of nonporous materials (100% silicone toys, glass toys, stainless steel toys), that don’t include an electrical or battery-operated element can be plunged into boiling water for up to 3 minutes to completely sanitise and eliminate any nasties. You can leave them out to air dry if you don’t have a clean towel to hand but remember to put them back in the drawer once they’ve dried!

If you’re cleaning battery-operated sex toys like your vibrator, make sure you take the batteries out before you put them under the tap. Always fully tighten the battery compartment, and don’t submerge them fully underneath the water, or you’ll be left with more of a damp squib rather than a pocket rocket!

One particular toy that’s worth looking at a little closer is the iconic Fleshlight or other masturbators like Fleshjack. A fantastic toy used predominantly for masturbation, Fleshlights are coated in a light powder that gives them their unique, skinlike quality. However, after frequent use this coating tends to wear off, leaving you with a rather ‘tacky’ feeling, not the hyperreal sensation you’re after.

Unsurprisingly, Harmony has everything you need to keep yours in good working order. Use the Fleshlight Cleaning Spray first, then a liberal sprinkling of Fleshlight Renewing Powder, which will restore the original feel of your Fleshlight, so you can enjoy that brand-new feel over, and over, and over again.

Penis pump kits can cost a pretty penny, so if you’ve got one and you want to extend its working life and keep it squeaky clean, the Bathmate Penis Pump Cleaning Kit is the one for you. With two super-soft Bathmate towels, a cleaning brush to reach the very end of the pump cylinder, and two brush heads so you can keep everything hygienic, this is an essential tool for something you regularly put arguably your most precious bodily part in! Use one of our antibacterial sex toy cleaner sprays and some warm water for the best results.

If you’re a fan of electro-play or like to indulge in a spot of medical roleplay, then the toys and equipment you use will need sanitising. Harmony favourites ElectraStim provide a pack of 10 Sterile Cleansing Wipes ideal for cleaning medical devices and ElectroStim toys like the Metal Electro Mini Butt Plug or the Luxury Metal Halo ElectroSex Clitoral Stimulator. Alcohol-based, they’ll keep your play safe and clean, and allow you to play with multiple partners.

If you’re serious about your sex toy collection (and who isn’t?), taking care of it should become second nature. Take a little time before and after every session to give them some loving attention, and you’ll ensure your toys last years, not months.

For more information, visit our Sex Toy Cleaners page. If you’re unsure about which cleaning product is right for your sex toy, speak to one of our friendly Customer Services team for help.

Sex toys, sex toys, sex toys. What would we do without them? Probably get a lot more hand cramps.

You might well have a raised eyebrow at the title of this blog post, I mean, how could we possibly claim to know what the best sex toy is for you specifically? Pleasure is an incredibly personal thing, so surely what’s best for one person might not tickle the pickle of another. What’s more, our bodies and preferences change, so what once spanked the spot simply might not be doing the job anymore.

The long and short of it is that you’re right, we can’t tell you what toy is best for you personally – that’s a journey of self-discovery for you and your sock drawer collection. But, we can point out the absolute classics that have stood the test of time and continue to grow in popularity.

As much as we encourage innovation in the world of sex toys, some toys have been getting us off for hundreds if not thousands of years… so we see nothing wrong with going back to basics. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it is ‘broke’, maybe consider replacing or upgrading it with one of these trusty and reliable toys…

Dildos

Ahh yes, the humble yet beloved dildo.

A true pillar – ahem – of the sex toy industry and as research would suggest, one of the first representations of male genitalia crafted exclusively for our pleasure. Far before the invention of writing, primitive beings had other priorities on their mind it would seem, like carving stone into dicks and polishing them up nice and smooth for a good old riding.

Leap forward to the time of the Ancient Greeks (approximately 500 BC) and we find even more evidence of experimentation with the design of the dildo, from brass and leather inventions to more bizarre and edible creations like the breadstick dildo known as Olisbokollix.

Yep, you read that right. The Ancient Greeks really had a sense of creativity when it came to cumming.

Imagine a large hardened breadstick, that’s the sort of naughtiness they were into. To make matters even odder and let’s be honest, only slightly more disturbing, the lube substitute at the time, to ensure you could enjoy your breadstick in all its glory was, of course, olive oil. I mean, what else?

I don’t know about you but I’ll probably never look at a baguette in the same way again…

Vibrators

Nowadays, we associate sex toys like vibrators as objects of female sexual empowerment but that wasn’t always the case. The precursor to modern-day vibrators has a pretty sexist history. Vibrators were first created by Victorian doctors who believed masturbation was the cure to women’s problems, otherwise known as ‘hysteria’. What they hadn’t clocked onto was the fact that these women were sexually frustrated, as you might well be in a time where even table legs could be considered risqué and had to be covered up lest your gaze became lustful. If you were a woman suffering from anxiety, insomnia, irritability, answering back to your husband (phahahahahaha) and heaven forbid sexual desire(!), you were medically diagnosed with hysteria, the only cure for which at the time, was manual masturbation… by your doctor, until you came.

Two of the many many problems with this were that A) it was time-consuming and B) doctors began complaining of wrist aches (lol put some elbow grease into it doc/ seems like some things never change).

And so we see the conception of the first vibrator. TA DAA!

Terrifyingly named ‘The Manipulator’ and even more terrifyingly a steam-driven mechanical device offering orgasms to the ‘hysterical’ amongst us, the Manipulator had arrived to put women back in line and protect the precious wrists of doctors all over. One continuous theme we see when it comes to the vibrator is the hilarious guise of their use as medical devices rather than pleasure devices. In a stroke of genius, in the 1960s Hitachi released the Magic Wand “designed to relieve serious back pain” then lo and behold we simultaneously observe a mysterious epidemic of back pain, exclusively developing in women (hehe, go on girls).

Today vibrators come in an even more exciting and less steam-powered variety and we no longer have to fake a medical condition to justify having a wank (yay!) From wearable vibrators (thankfully crafted of medical-grade silicone rather than metal) to finger vibrators and waterproof vibrators, the vibe play options in 2022 are endless.

Clitoral Stimulators

In terms of standing the test of time, clitoral stimulators are a little tricky as they’re relatively modern sex toys, first disrupting the sex toy landscape in the mid-2010s. True appreciation of the pleasure power of the clitoris is somewhat new, so there’s not a vast history behind our beloved clit suckers. Having said that, there is one absolute gem that highlights how our interest in stimulating the sweet spot goes way, way back.

The story goes that Cleopatra, the infamous ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, used a gourd (fruit) filled with trapped bees for a buzzing session of clitoral stimulation. Admittedly, it’s a little dubious. There’s not a whole lot of evidence to back the rumour up but hey, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Dual Pleasure Devices

Similarly to the clit sucker, dual stimulation devices like the rabbit vibrator haven’t been around for too long, first appearing on the market in the 1980s. Popularised by Sex and the City, and combining the charm of clitoral stimulation with the beauty of a g spot vibrator, there’s no doubt that dual stimulation vibrators are some of the best out there.

Butt Plugs

Butt stuff, it ain’t that new. We’ve been at it for years.

Our ancestors enjoyed backdoor adventures in numerous ways, both together and solo. Their perpetually inventive natures had them developing methods for anal play a long time ago and the first documented butt plugs are a creation of Dr Young’s from 1893. Similarly to vibrators, butt plugs were not marketed as sex toys. Instead, they were prescribed by doctors to cure several conditions including insomnia, acne and constipation. Lovely!

So how did we make the leap from medical butt stuff to sexual butt stuff? It’s fair to say that at least some of Dr Young’s customers were using them recreationally. Butt, and it’s a big butt (hehe), they hadn’t yet been perfected as the smooth and tapered silicone plugs we know and love today.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that silicone emerged as a body-safe material, more hygienic and easily cleaned than rubber, totally revolutionising the butt plug game. Since then, butt plugs have only gone up.

Vibrating Cock Rings

Okay so we can’t date the vibrating cock ring back to 12th-century China but the innovation of a cock ring in – I’ll be very honest – its most basic form does indeed date back that far. Humans are strange and as we’ve seen above, resourceful creatures but this one is the cherry on the cake, or should I say the goat eyelid on the cock.

Yep, that’s right. At some point in time, someone looked a goat in the eye and saw more than just a twinkle. They saw potential, great cock ring making potential…

Don’t look too horrified, they don’t make ‘em quite like that anymore.

But years ago to help men who struggled with erectile dysfunction, the cock ring was fashioned. Crafted of a literal goat’s eyelid, complete with lashes n all.

Presumably, the elasticity of the eyelid was a major attraction, but leaving the hardened eyelashes in place suggests they played a part themselves, potentially providing extra stimulation for the wearer’s partner. We love to see it!

Incredibly, somehow the early cock ring caught on (probably due to its effectiveness) and has evolved into quite something else (thankfully). More sophisticated versions have emerged over the years but the principle remains the same, cock rings have a constricting effect meaning they restrict the flow of blood out of the penis and making erections stronger and causing them to last longer.

Strap-Ons

The origin story for the strap-on is not too dissimilar to that of the dildo, after all, they are cousins of sorts. References to these bad boys crop up in a little well-known book you might have flicked through already, especially given that you’re, well… here, reading this, you little minx. The Kama Sutra (300-400 BC) mentions various sex toys with the potential to enhance your sex life beyond belief, one of which is the strap-on. The page-turner instructs men to try a strap-on if they are struggling to satisfy their partner perhaps as a result of erectile dysfunction. Wonderfully, the Kama Sutra encourages and celebrates the ability to satisfy one’s partner through alternative means rather than viewing it as emasculating.

Well, thanks for coming along for the ride!

Now you know how to elevate your masturbation game or your steamy escapades with your significant other to the next level there’s only one more thing to add. When you’re ready and about to get down to it, slather your sex toy in lube, we’d recommend water-based lube as it’s compatible with just about all sex toys. Whether it’s your first time shopping for sex toys or it’s scheduled as part of your self-care routine, shop with Harmony Store, one of the best sex toy retailers for delicious deals on top brands like Tenga, Satisfyer and so many more.