Material lists are written to be skimmed, and most of the words in them are decoration. Four or five facts decide whether something is safe against skin, and once you know which four, you can read any product page in about fifteen seconds and know more than the description is telling you.
None of this is specific to anything we make. It applies to whatever is already in your drawer.
Porous, or not
This is the first question and it settles most of the others.
Non-porous, and therefore properly cleanable: platinum-cure silicone, borosilicate glass, stainless steel, anodised aluminium, glazed ceramic, sealed stone.
Porous: jelly, PVC and vinyl, TPE and TPR, anything sold as “cyberskin” or “real feel”, untreated leather, unsealed wood, natural rubber.
Porous means the surface has somewhere for things to live, and no amount of washing reaches it.
The consequences are practical rather than alarming. A porous item is one person’s and stays one person’s. It is not shared, and it is not moved between parts of a body. It has a life measured in months rather than years, and when it starts to change it is finished.
The smell test
If something smells of plastic through its packaging — the smell of a new shower curtain — it is off-gassing plasticisers. That is the material telling you what it is made of, and it is the single most reliable signal available to you without a laboratory.
The same goes for anything that arrives faintly oily to the touch, or that has gone tacky sitting in a drawer. That is the material breaking down. It will not recover, it will mark whatever it is stored against, and the right response is a bin rather than a wash.
Silicone, and the one rule about it
Look for platinum-cure, sometimes written as platinum-catalysed or medical grade. The alternative, tin-cure, is less stable over time. Platinum-cure silicone is non-porous, tolerates boiling, and does not leach.
The rule worth knowing: silicone lubricant can bond with silicone surfaces and degrade them. Water-based lubricant is the default that never causes this. If you want to use a silicone lubricant with a silicone object anyway, put a drop on the base, leave it twenty minutes, and look for dulling or tackiness — some formulations are fine together and there is no way to tell but to test.
Store silicone apart from other silicone, and out of sealed plastic bags. Two silicones left in contact can react with each other and both go soft, which is a slow and entirely avoidable way to lose two things at once.
Oil and latex do not survive each other
Any oil — massage oil, coconut oil, body lotion, petroleum jelly — weakens latex within minutes. A latex condom or glove that has met oil can fail without looking any different beforehand, which is what makes this worth knowing rather than guessing.
If a latex barrier is anywhere in the evening, the lubricant is water-based or silicone-based, and the massage oil goes on a different part of the plan. Polyurethane barriers do not have this problem, if that matters to you.
Glass, metal, stone, wood, leather
Borosilicate glass is non-porous and holds temperature well. Run a finger around every rim and seam each time you use it; a chip is not repairable and a chipped edge is not usable.
Stainless steel and anodised aluminium are heavy, cleanable, and take temperature fast — which is the catch. Warm or cool them in water, not in a freezer. Metal at freezer temperature can stick to skin.
Stone depends entirely on whether it is sealed. Unsealed stone is porous and should not meet oil you cannot get back out of it. Warm stone in water and test it on the inside of your own wrist before it goes anywhere else.
Wood is fine only while its hard sealed finish is intact, and finished only when that finish is scratched.
Leather cannot be boiled or soaked. It is porous, so it stays one person’s: wipe it, let it dry away from direct heat, and condition it occasionally. Full- grain leather softens with use and lasts decades. Bonded leather is offcuts glued into a sheet and will crack.
What to read on a lubricant label
Shorter ingredient lists are usually the kinder ones. Four things worth noticing:
- Glycerin, which can feed yeast in people who are prone to it.
- Fragrance, and anything described as warming, cooling or tingling. Those effects are usually menthol or capsaicin, and they work by irritating tissue, which is exactly what they will do to anyone sensitive.
- Very high osmolality, which draws water out of tissue and leaves it drier and more fragile than before. The gentler formulations tend to say so.
- Sugars and flavourings, for the same reason as glycerin.
Patch-test anything new on the inside of a forearm and give it an hour before it goes anywhere more interesting.
Cleaning, briefly
Unscented mild soap and warm water handles almost everything. Rinse for longer than feels necessary — residue irritates far more often than dirt does — and dry completely before anything is put away. Damp is what turns a drawer into a problem.
Non-porous items with no motor and no seams can be boiled for a few minutes. Anything with a battery, a motor, an unsealed join, leather or wood cannot, and trying it once is enough to ruin it.
Store things apart from each other, in cloth rather than sealed plastic, so nothing spends six months pressed against something it reacts with.
If skin reacts
Stop, wash with plain water, and do not reach for a scented product to fix it. Redness, itching or swelling that is still there the next day, or any broken skin, is worth a doctor — and worth telling them which material was involved, because that is how you find out whether it was latex, a fragrance or something in the lubricant, rather than avoiding all three forever.
None of this needs to slow an evening down. It is fifteen seconds of reading before something is bought, and ten minutes of care afterwards, and it is the difference between objects that last a decade and objects that quietly stop being safe while looking exactly the same. What to do with the evening itself is in the first ten minutes.