Care & hygiene
The thirty-second wash, the drying step everyone skips, the charging port that fails first, and the signs that mean it is time to replace.
Rinse it with warm water, wash it with mild fragrance-free soap for about thirty seconds, rinse properly, then dry it with a lint-free cloth and let it air dry completely before it goes back in its pouch. Clean it before and after every use. Soap and water is the whole routine — silicone does not need disinfecting, and alcohol or household cleaner will damage the surface.
The short version
Cleaning a personal massager means washing it with warm water and mild fragrance-free soap before and after every use, then drying it fully before you put it away.
Do the wash both before and after every use. Clean a personal massager before and after every use: the after-wash protects the surface from odor, and the before-wash clears the dust it collected in storage.
The wash after use protects the device. Body oils, lubricant and residue left on the surface are what cause odor over time, and they also degrade the surface fastest. Thirty seconds immediately after use removes all of it while it is still easy to remove.
The wash before use protects you. A device that has sat in a drawer for three weeks has collected dust and whatever else the drawer holds. If it has been sitting for more than a fortnight, wash it again before use even if you know it was clean when stored.
If you use lubricant, clean immediately afterwards rather than leaving it. Dried water-based lubricant forms a film that is far harder to remove than fresh lubricant, and it holds dust against the surface in the meantime.
The Wikipedia entry Hygiene (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene) frames it as the practices that preserve health — which is why the drying step matters as much as the washing step: a device put away damp gives residue somewhere to live.
The whole routine needs only things already in most kitchens and bathrooms: warm water, mild fragrance-free soap, a lint-free cloth, and somewhere to air dry.
Warm water. Not hot. Very hot water is hard on silicone over time and does nothing warm water does not.
Mild, fragrance-free soap. Hand soap is fine. Avoid anything heavy on fragrance, and avoid anything abrasive or scrubby.
A lint-free cloth or a soft towel. Lint sticks to silicone and both looks like residue and holds moisture.
Somewhere to air dry. A clean towel or a drying rack, not a closed drawer and not a bathroom cabinet while the shower runs.
What not to use. Alcohol, antibacterial spray, household cleaner, bleach, acetone, boiling water, a dishwasher and a microwave. None are necessary for a body-safe silicone device, and most shorten its life. Silicone is a non-porous, phthalate-free material, so soap removes what needs removing and the rest is marketing. You cannot fully sanitize a porous material no matter how thoroughly you wash it, which is why a non-porous silicone device is the easier one to live with.
Drying. A device put away still damp is the single most common cause of a smell that will not go away. Air dry it completely, with the charging port cover open if it has one.
What you may do with your device depends entirely on its IPX rating, which is listed in the specifications table on every product page.
A device rated IPX5 rinses safely at the sink, IPX6 can be used in the shower, and IPX7 is fully submersible, so always match the wash to the rating.
| Rating | Survives | How to clean it |
|---|---|---|
| IPX5 | Splashes and a directed jet of water | Hold it under a running tap. Do not submerge it, and do not use it in the bath. |
| IPX6 | Powerful jets, brief immersion | Rinse thoroughly under the tap or in the shower. Submerging it for long periods is unnecessary. |
| IPX7 | Immersion to one meter for 30 minutes per IEC 60529 — a test condition rather than a depth rating. where these numbers come from: market data lists what each level permits and what it does not. | Wash it fully in the sink or the bath. The easiest of the three to keep clean. |
Where this matters in practice: SlimS is IPX5 splash-proof, which is enough to rinse it clean at the sink. Pocket Bunny, TapTap and Knock Knock are IPX6 and can be rinsed thoroughly or used in the shower. DuoWave is IPX7 fully submersible, which makes cleaning it a completely different proposition — sink, bath or shower, with no care needed about splashing.
What you should not do at any rating: submerge a device on purpose to “soak” it. Water resistance is a protection for accidental exposure and normal cleaning, not an invitation, and repeated soaking puts pressure on the seals for no benefit.
James Hamblin’s argument in [Hamblin, 2020] is that “clean” has been oversold as a product category and undersold as a routine. The practical translation for a silicone device is mild soap, warm water, and complete drying.
The questions this section raises are answered in one place: massager FAQ: what arrives, and how.
The five-step wash takes about thirty seconds: rinse, soap, rinse again, dry the outside, then air dry completely before it goes back in its pouch.
1. Rinse. Warm water over the whole surface first, before any soap. This removes most of what is there so the soap has less to do.
2. Soap. A small amount of mild fragrance-free soap in your palm, worked over the surface with your fingers. No cloth, no brush, no scrubbing — silicone does not need abrasion and abrasion is what dulls it.
3. Rinse again, properly. This is the step people rush. Soap residue is worse than no soap at all: it is sticky, it attracts dust, and it can cause skin irritation. Rinse until the surface stops feeling slippery.
4. Dry the outside. Pat it with a lint-free cloth. Work around the seams and the charging port rather than wiping across them.
5. Air dry completely. Leave it out, uncovered, until every part of it is dry — including inside the port cover. Ten minutes on a clean towel is usually enough. Only then put it back in its pouch.
The charging port is the part that fails first, so wipe it dry after every wash and keep its cover closed whenever the device is not charging.
Most devices that fail from water do not fail because the body leaked. They fail at the charging port, which is the one place where the outer shell has to be interrupted.
Three habits cover it. Wipe the port dry after every wash, and never while the device is wet. Keep the port cover closed when the device is not on charge — an open cover is an open hole. And let the device air dry upside down after washing, so that any moisture that did get in has somewhere to go other than into the electronics.
This is also a good reason to prefer a magnetic snap-on charging contact over a recessed USB socket when you are choosing a device. A magnetic contact has no cavity to collect residue, no cover to forget to close, and nothing to clean but a flat surface. Mingle, TapTap, Pocket Bunny and the rest of the range use magnetic charging for exactly this reason.
Most devices are not one material: a food-grade silicone body sits alongside hard plastic, a splash-resistant remote, and seams that each need a slightly different touch.
Silicone body. Soap and water, as above. Nothing else.
Hard plastic sections. The same wash, and this is the one place where an alcohol wipe is safe if you want one — but there is no need.
Buttons and seams. The places residue collects. A soft toothbrush with a little soap is useful here, used gently and only on the seams, not on the silicone surface.
The remote. Wipe with a slightly damp cloth. Do not rinse it under a tap, because remotes are usually splash-resistant rather than submersible.
Textured external arms. Knock Knock has a textured external arm and TapTap has a tapping drive; texture holds residue more than a smooth surface does. Spend a few extra seconds working soap into the texture with your fingertips, and take the same extra care when drying.
If you take one thing into a shop, take the IP code. Across our catalog the three versions that appear are IPX5 splash-proof on 60 models, IPX6 fully waterproof on 26, and IPX7 fully submersible on exactly one — the same distribution, incidentally, that most of this category follows. The Wikipedia entry IP code is the standard these codes come from, and the useful part of it is what each step does and does not promise: IPX5 covers water jets from any direction, IPX6 covers powerful jets, and IPX7 covers immersion to one meter for a stated time.
Translated into a sink: IPX5 means rinsing is fine and the tap should not be aimed at seams for long; IPX6 means you can rinse without being careful; IPX7 means a bath is within what the maker certifies. None of the three means “dishwasher”, “boiling water” or “store it wet”, and the most common way these devices fail is not the shell — it is a device put away damp, with the water sitting in whatever recess it found.
The specific models worth naming here are the ones you can rinse without thinking about it. At IPX6 there are more than twenty-six to choose from, including the Loop 2 ring, the Cradle wearable, the Trace ring, the Snowdrop and the Columbine. Every one of them still needs drying afterwards, and the drying is the step people skip.
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Almost every cleaning question in this category reduces to one property, and it is not how well you wash — it is whether the material has holes in it.
A non-porous surface has nowhere for anything to go. Fluids, bacteria and fungi stay on the outside, where soap and water can reach them. A porous material is shot through with microscopic channels, and whatever touches it goes below the surface, where no brush and no cleaner can follow.
This is why the standard advice for porous products is not a better cleaning routine but a condom. You are not cleaning the material; you are putting a non-porous layer in front of it, because the material itself cannot be made clean.
The practical signs are easy to read once you know them. A porous surface starts to feel tacky rather than smooth. It holds an odor that comes back a day after washing. Two products stored touching each other can begin to melt into one another. Any of those three means the material is past the point where cleaning helps, and the honest move is replacement rather than another wash.
Which reframes what “how often should I clean it” actually asks. The question that matters more is how long the material stays cleanable at all. A body-safe silicone device washed with soap and water will still be the same surface in five years. A porous device is on a clock from the first use, and the clock does not reset.
The full material comparison — which surfaces are non-porous, what the grades mean, and why “silicone blend” is a phrase rather than a material — is in silicone versus jelly, TPE and PVC. If you are buying for a household rather than for resale, that page is the one that decides whether the thing you are about to wash is washable at all.
While you are here
With a silicone device, always use water-based lubricant, because silicone-based lubricant softens and degrades the surface over time, which ruins the non-porous finish.
With a silicone device, use water-based lubricant. Silicone-based lubricant and silicone devices are not compatible over time — it can soften and degrade the surface, which is the exact non-porous finish you paid for. Oil-based lubricant is the other one to keep away from silicone. Water-based lubricant is compatible with everything, and it rinses off with warm water in seconds.
Practically, water-based lubricant makes cleaning easier as well as being the safer choice: it does not leave an oily film, it does not need a detergent to shift, and it does not stain the surface. Two small habits: use less than you think you need and reapply, and wipe the device with a dry cloth before the wash so you are not pushing lubricant around the surface.
Store every device dry, in its pouch, somewhere cool and dark, because almost every non-battery problem traces back to damp or crushed storage.
Dry first, always. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the biggest single cause of odor.
In the pouch it came with. A pouch keeps dust off and keeps the surface from being abraded by whatever else is in the drawer. It also keeps the device from being crushed.
Cool and dark. Direct sunlight and warm spots are hard on both silicone and batteries. A bedside drawer is close to ideal.
Do not let different materials touch. If you own a silicone device and a softer one, keep them apart. Over months, silicone and softer materials can react and leave a permanent mark that will not wash out. Silicone against silicone is fine.
Not in the bathroom cabinet. Bathrooms are humid, and humidity is the enemy of both seal integrity and electronics. If the bathroom is the only private place you have, put the device in a sealed pouch or a small lockable box rather than loose on a shelf.
A smell that survives a proper wash or a surface that has gone sticky means the material has failed, and no cleaning can restore it, so replace the device rather than keep scrubbing.
A smell that survives a proper wash. If soap, water and thorough drying have not removed it, the odor has gone into the material rather than sitting on it. That is a sign the surface is no longer doing its job as a non-porous barrier, and cleaning cannot restore it.
A sticky or tacky surface. This is degradation, usually from alcohol exposure, heat, or simply time. There is no product that reverses it, and a sticky surface collects dust actively. Replace the device.
Discoloration. Some marking is staining from lubricant or from storage against another material, and is cosmetic. But if the discoloration is accompanied by a change in texture, treat it as degradation.
Cracks, pitting or a split at a seam. Replace immediately. Cracks are where water gets in and where material stops being cleanable.
Do not apply oils, powders, silicone spray or heat to a degraded device. None of them restore the surface, and several make it worse. If the material has failed, the answer is a new one.
Never pack a device that is still damp, because inside a closed case for hours dampness has nowhere to go and will cause odor before you next open it.
The routine does not change, but the facilities do.
Hotel bathrooms are usually fine — warm water, soap, a towel. What you will not have is a drying rack, so plan for air drying: stand the device upright on a spare towel, or use the hairdryer on its cool setting from a distance if you need it dry before packing.
If your schedule does not allow for a full dry before you fly, wash it before you leave home rather than in the hotel on the last morning.
Bring the pouch rather than loosening the routine — a dedicated travel case is better still, because it keeps the device away from the rest of your bag and protects it from being crushed. And if you are traveling with a partner or sharing a room, clean it the night before you leave rather than the morning of, when you will not have the privacy or the time to do it properly.
Not sure which one?
Message us and describe your routine — where, how often, on your own or with someone. You will get a straight answer about which device fits, usually within a few minutes, and we would rather recommend the cheaper one than the wrong one.
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The five mistakes that shorten a device are storing it damp, using alcohol, leaving lubricant on, charging it wet, and storing mixed materials together.
| Mistake | What it does | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Storing it damp | Causes odor and seal degradation | Air dry completely, then pouch it |
| Alcohol or household cleaner | Turns a smooth surface tacky and eventually sticky | Mild fragrance-free soap only |
| Leaving lubricant on it | Builds a film that holds dust and sets hard | Wash immediately after use |
| Charging it wet | Corrodes the contacts — the most common electrical failure | Dry the port first, always |
| Storing mixed materials touching | Leaves permanent marks on the silicone | One pouch per device |
The through-line is that almost all of this is about two things: removing residue while it is fresh, and never letting the device sit damp. Get those two right and a body-safe silicone device used weekly will stay in good condition for a long time. Get them wrong and it will not matter how much you spent on it.
Thirty seconds of washing before and after every use is the whole investment, and a device kept dry and clean lasts until something actually fails rather than on a schedule.
The first is hygiene. A device that goes through a proper wash before and after every use is a device you never have to wonder about.
The second is that cleaning costs less than replacing. A device kept dry and washed properly does not need replacing on a schedule — it lasts until something actually fails. Thirty seconds twice per use is the whole investment.
Every DuckDuo device is body-safe silicone, which is non-porous and holds up to exactly this routine. If you are choosing your first device, prefer one with a magnetic charging contact and a covered port; if you are not sure which of the range suits the way you actually use it, tap Chat to Order and describe your routine — a device that gets washed properly twice a week is worth more than a more expensive one that sits in a drawer.
The models this guide refers to
More on materials, cleaning and storage
Where to go next
Everything below is a public source you can open yourself. Where a claim in this guide rests on someone else’s work, it is listed here rather than left floating.
Every figure in this guide that carries a source also appears in the site-wide table of our personal massager data table, where each row states what the number measures and what it does not apply to.
Before and after every use. The “after” wash is the one that matters for the device, because residue left on the surface is what causes odor and degradation. The “before” wash matters for you, because anything that has sat in a drawer has collected dust. If it has been more than a couple of weeks since you last used it, wash it again before use.
Yes — mild, fragrance-free hand soap and warm water is the recommended method, and it is what most manufacturers specify. What you want to avoid is anything abrasive, heavily fragranced, or antibacterial, and anything containing alcohol. Silicone does not need disinfecting; soap removes what needs removing.
No. Even a fully submersible device should not go in a dishwasher — the water temperature, the detergent and the drying cycle will all shorten its life, and the motor and charging contacts are not designed for it. Warm water at the sink is both gentler and more effective.
Alcohol wipes are fine on hard plastic and metal, but not on silicone — repeated alcohol exposure is one of the most common causes of a surface that eventually goes tacky. A dedicated cleaner labeled as silicone-safe is a reasonable alternative to soap, but it is not necessary. Soap and water does the same job.
Wipe it with a dry cloth or a dry cotton bud after every wash and never while it is wet. A covered or magnetic charging contact is the most durable design because there is no open recess to collect residue. If a port has already been exposed to moisture, let the device air dry upside down for a few hours before charging it.
Yes, and it is easy to forget. Wireless remotes are typically splash-resistant rather than submersible, so wipe them with a slightly damp cloth rather than rinsing them under a tap. Clean the remote at the same time as the device so that one does not become the thing that carries residue back to the other.
Replace it if the surface has developed cracks or pitting, if the silicone has gone sticky or is secreting a film you cannot wash off, if there is an odor that survives cleaning, if it no longer holds a charge, or if it becomes warm while charging. Any of those is a material or battery failure, and no amount of cleaning fixes it.
Dry, in its pouch, somewhere cool and dark, away from direct sunlight. Do not store devices made of different materials touching each other — silicone can react with softer materials over months and end up permanently marked. Do not store it damp, and do not store it somewhere it will be crushed.
No — not any device with a motor, a battery or a charging port, whatever the water rating says. A dishwasher combines heat well above what the housing and the seals are rated for, a long soak, and detergent designed to strip grease. The water rating describes water pressure and immersion at ambient temperature; it says nothing about 60 °C with a caustic detergent. Hand washing takes about thirty seconds and is the reason the device still works in two years.
Wipe rather than rinse. Dampen a lint-free cloth with warm water and a drop of mild fragrance-free soap, wipe the skin-contact surface, then wipe again with a clean damp cloth to lift the soap residue, then dry. Keep the port and any seam away from running water. A device with no published IP rating is not necessarily fragile — it just has no stated resistance, so the safe assumption is splash-only and the cloth method covers it.
Warm water and mild soap do not. What wears it out is the three things people reach for when they want to be thorough: alcohol, solvents, and heat. Alcohol pulls the surface oils out of the material and leaves it dull and slightly tacky, which then collects dust and feels different within months. If the surface has already gone tacky on a silicone device, that is usually a cleaning product, not age — and it does not come back.
Then the smell is not on the surface, and no amount of washing will reach it. On a non-porous material this is rare and usually means something was trapped in a seam, under a removable sleeve, or in the port cover. On a porous material — TPE, TPR, anything sold as jelly — it means the material has absorbed what it was sitting in, and that is not reversible. That difference is the entire argument for non-porous silicone: it can be cleaned rather than replaced.
Because cleaning depends on porosity, not effort. A non-porous surface has nowhere for anything to go, so fluids and bacteria stay on the outside where soap and water reach them. A porous material is shot through with microscopic channels, and whatever touches it goes below the surface where no brush follows. That is why the standard advice for porous products is a condom rather than a better routine: you are not cleaning the material, you are putting a non-porous layer in front of it.
Three signs, and any one of them is enough. The surface starts to feel tacky rather than smooth. An odor comes back a day after washing. Two products stored touching each other begin to melt into one another. Those are all signs the material has changed rather than merely soiled, and at that point another wash does not help. A body-safe silicone device washed with soap and water will still be the same surface in five years; a porous one is on a clock from first use.
Rinsing afterwards does not undo what the alcohol in the wipe has already done to the surface. Over time it dries and clouds silicone. Mild fragrance-free soap and warm water is the whole routine; if you want something stronger, ask us which cleaners are safe for silicone.
Clean it, dry it completely, then store it in a lint-free pouch away from humidity and away from other materials. Charge it to roughly half before it goes away, and check it once when you take it out. Porous items stored against silicone can leach into it.
Yes, a mild unscented soap and warm water is what we recommend for routine cleaning. Skip anything perfumed, exfoliating, or antibacterial, since residues and additives are unnecessary on a body-safe surface. Rinse thoroughly and dry completely before putting it away.
No — for body-safe silicone, mild soap and water does the job that specialist sprays claim to do better. Dedicated cleaners cost more without adding anything most people need. Spend the effort on drying and storage instead, which is where most cleaning routines actually fail.
The routine does not change; the schedule does. A device in use is cleaned before and after each use. Stock is cleaned once before it goes into storage, kept sealed, and checked at the point of dispatch — because the failure that matters commercially is a unit that arrived at a customer with a mark on it, not a unit that sat in a warehouse for a season.
Dry, sealed and out of sunlight, with the charge left around half rather than full. Damp is the enemy of every material in this category, and a sealed pouch is the cheapest control available. The storage guide goes further into why a bathroom shelf is the worst place in a house; the same reasoning applies to a stockroom shelf next to a wall.
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If this guide did not answer your question, message us. You will get a straight answer, usually within a few minutes.
Only the guides that answer a question you actually have.
Why storage is a hygiene problem rather than a privacy one, what the pouch is actually for, and the four storage mistakes that quietly ruin a device.
Read the guide →Three lubricant types, three material families, and one rule that solves almost every combination. Plus what actually happens when you get it wrong, and whether damage is reversible.
Read the guide →Splash-proof, shower-safe and submersible are different things. Here is what IPX5, IPX6 and IPX7 really allow, and why so many water-damage reviews are a rating mismatch.
Read the guide →Ready when you are
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