It should go without saying — but is well worth saying anyway! — that the choice of lube is an entirely personal choice. From a cleaning perspective, however, water-based lubes are the clear winner; they’re very easy stains to treat and often don’t even require a pre-treatment product because regular washing will remove them from sheets and so on. Note: Most warming, cooling and flavored lubes are water-based.
The problem with water-based lubes, however, is an ironic one: They dry out fairly quickly, which can be annoying (stopping to reapply!) all the way up to painful (oh ouch chafing!) Silicone lubes, on the other hand, are more slippery than their water-based counterparts and, more importantly, very long lasting. But oh the stains! THE STAINS!
The good news for silicone lube enthusiasts is that I am here and I have silicone lube WISDOM to impart. Here is is: This is The Stuff for silicone lube stains.
To use it, apply it directly to the stains just prior to laundering (allow a few minutes for it to penetrate — SORRY! — the stains before chucking the item in the washing machine).
But also there’s a weird thing you need to know about Soilove, that I learned after reading an unholy number of reviews of the stuff most of which were like “this stuff is AMAZING” but some of which were like, “this stuff did NOTHING.” Soilove should have a very distinctly strong smell. If you get a bottle that doesn’t have a distinctly strong smell, you probably ended up with a bum bottle and therefore the product will do not much at all.
Another piece of lube-y wisdom I’d like to impart before sending you off to bang your brains out has to do with a laundry best practice, because lube stains, regardless of the type of lube in question, do a dastardly thing. When lube-stained fabric is wet, i.e. just out of the washing machine, stains that didn’t come out entirely are often obscured by the dampness. The result is that it’s pretty easy to put a still-stained sheet into the dryer, thinking that the stains came out in the wash. And the heat of a dryer will cause those stains to set. The best solution to this is to dry lube-stained items on the lowest heat setting available, just out of an abundance of caution.