How Do You Store Sex Toys Discreetly?

Store a toy clean, bone dry, and not touching anything made of soft plasticized material, somewhere cool and dark that is not the bathroom, with any removable battery out of it. If other people live with you, put it in a container that closes and leave that container in plain sight. That whole routine adds almost nothing to the wash you are already doing.

I care about this more than I care about the cleaning routine. A toy gets washed for two minutes and then sits in a drawer for three weeks, so the drawer is where almost all of its life happens.

Four things do the damage in there: moisture, material contact, heat, and a battery left inside. Discretion is a fifth decision, and it is the only one here about other people instead of the toy.

Does a toy have to be completely dry before you put it away?

Yes, and dry means dry into the seams. A towel gets the outside; the seams need air.

Moisture is the problem you bring in yourself, because the last thing you do before storing a toy is wash it. Seal that water into a zipped case or a drawstring bag and you have built a very small humid room with one object in it.

Non-porous surfaces make this easy. Silicone, glass, and stainless steel hold water on the outside, so a cloth and a few minutes of open air finish the job. Porous surfaces hold water in the material, so soft TPE, TPR, jelly, and the squishy realistic blends need longer, uncovered, before they go anywhere that closes.

Pay attention to the places a towel never reaches: the well of a charging port, the inside of a sleeve, the suction base of a dildo, and any deep texture.

A sleeve holds water where you cannot see it, because the surface that needs air is folded inside itself.

The washing half of this has its own walkthrough in how often you should really clean your vibrator, and the toy cleaners are gathered in one place.

Do sex toys need to be stored apart from each other?

Some do, and the ones that do are the soft, squishy, plasticized ones. Those get their own bag, every time.

The reason is what they are made of. A 2006 Danish Environmental Protection Agency survey of adult products found that the pieces sold as jelly were plasticized PVC, with plasticizer making up as much as 70 percent of some of them, and identified the phthalates DEHP, DNOP and DINP among them. A surface that is largely plasticizer has plasticizer available to migrate, and where it shows up is anywhere two of those surfaces sit pressed together for weeks: tacky patches, pieces stuck to each other, one spot that has gone soft and stayed soft.

Non-porous materials are the milder case, and the honest answer there is that the sources disagree. Brook, the UK sexual health charity, advises against letting silicone toys touch each other. MysteryVibe, which manufactures them, says pure silicone pieces store together without trouble. With the evidence split, take the precaution. It asks nothing of you beyond a bag.

The unmarked case settles itself. A listing that does not name the material plainly has not told you whether a piece is 100 percent silicone or a blend, so that piece goes in with the plasticized group.

One bag per piece covers every case above at once.

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The Collection Burst Cotton Toy Storage Bag 7.5 x 12.25 in

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If I were buying once here, I would buy bags before I bought a box. Blush’s Collection bag is the plain version of it: one piece to a bag, and the sorting is done. The silicone care guide goes deeper on washing and lube compatibility if most of your drawer is silicone.

Where in the house should sex toys actually live?

Cool, dark, and dry. In most homes that means a bedroom drawer, and the room to rule out is the bathroom.

Heat and ultraviolet light age a soft elastomer: a TPE or jelly surface left in a sunny window discolors and softens. Heat works on the lithium cell inside a rechargeable toy too, which loses capacity faster the warmer it is stored, and a cell that is both warm and fully charged loses it faster still.

So no windowsill, no parked car, nothing on top of a radiator or on the shelf above a heating vent. A parked car in summer gets very hot. The bathroom cabinet is out for the humidity of a daily shower, and modesty has nothing to do with it.

A bedroom drawer or a closed box on a bedroom shelf does everything you need, off the floor and away from the window side of the room. I would rather you kept a toy somewhere you open every day than in a perfect spot you forget about.

Taking one out of the house is a different problem with different rules, and the flying question has its own answer.

What do you do about the batteries and the charge?

Take removable batteries out. Put a rechargeable away part-charged, and return it to the charger every few months.

Alkaline cells leak as they age. The leak lands on the contacts, the contacts corrode, and a working toy becomes a toy that does nothing when you press the button. So the removable ones come out of anything heading into a drawer for months.

Rechargeables have nothing to remove, so the charge level is the decision instead. A lithium cell dislikes both extremes. Held at a full charge it sheds capacity faster, and run down to empty and abandoned there it sheds capacity permanently. Part-charged, cool, and back on the cable every few months is the whole protocol, and where the maker prints a storage instruction, that one wins over anything here.

Which also means a toy left parked on its charger for months is sitting at the extreme you were trying to avoid.

How do you store sex toys out of sight without hiding them?

A container that closes, on a shelf, in plain view. Discretion is about the comfort of the people you live with, not about your own shame, and the two look completely different once you watch what they make you do.

Picture the two. In one, a toy lives inside a boot at the back of a closet, gets found anyway, and stays there, because getting it out again is a whole project. In the other, a closed box sits on the shelf beside everything else and is nobody’s business.

A box that locks earns its place the moment somebody else has reason to open your drawers: housemates, guests who stay over, a cleaner, a landlord with an inspection.

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Dorcel Discreet Storage Box with Code Lock

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Share a place with other adults and the Dorcel Discreet Storage Box is the shape this takes: it closes, and it closes on a code you set. Measure the longest piece you own before you buy any container for it, and I mean get a tape out, because a full-size wand and its cord are what a small box fails on. If what you want instead is a toy that is discreet in its own right, the discreet picks are a different shelf.

A combination box is a privacy device, not a safe. It keeps a curious housemate out of your business. It is no substitute for keeping anything genuinely out of a child’s reach, and nobody should use it as one.

Is the box it came in good enough?

Yes, when the packaging is the kind that holds the piece in place. A moulded tray or a fitted box has already done the separating for you. A clamshell or a bare sleeve has not, and plenty of toys ship in those.

Two conditions on the ones that qualify. It has to stay dry where you keep it, because cardboard in a humid cabinet is a sponge. And it has to close, so a lidless tray that leaves everything exposed to dust is not doing the job. Hit both and the box you already own does the job.

Packaging solves separation and dust. A lock is where it runs out, so if discretion is the problem you are solving, the box stops short. If a fabric pouch came inside it, that is the part worth keeping.

I would go through what you already own before buying anything. A fitted box on a dry shelf in a bedroom gets you most of the way.