Common questions regarding essential oils are:

How long will they last? What is the shelf life?

The answer is quite complex so if you are looking for a simple explanation, there isn’t one. It’s like asking what is the shelf life of food and expecting an easy response.

Before I get into a more detailed explanation of this subject, I will say that if you ask an essential oil supplier about the shelf life of their essential oils and receive a blanket response of X amount of time for all of them, or they tell you that their oils last longer because they are therapeutic, medicinal grade, wild crafted, certified organic, distilled in state of the art equipment, extracted by monks in sequined magenta robes at full moon or some other irrelevant nonsense, you should walk away as these factors have nothing to do with how long your essential oils will last. (more…)