What to Do With Expired Olive Oil (Hint: Great For Skin, Nails & Hair)
Oh darn. You completely forgot to check the date of your olive oil before now. When you open the bottle, you’re hit with a smell that’s not quite right. Tasting it confirms things: your olive oil has expired. Does this mean you have to throw the oil away, or can you use it for something else?
Expired olive oil has many other uses, including:
- As a shaving cream replacement
- On foot dryness and cracking
- As a nail treatment
- For damaged hair
- As a moisturizer for skin
- For exfoliating
As you can see, your olive oil can really go far, even if it has already passed its sell-by and expiration dates. Keep reading for more information on how to use old olive oil. You won’t want to miss it!
6 Ways to Use Expired Olive Oil
Shaving Cream Replacement
Have you run out of shaving cream but you can’t get to the store right now? Don’t panic. You’re not stuck with stubbly legs or an unwanted five o’ clock shadow.
Not only does olive oil soften the hair, which makes shaving easy and comfortable, but it could prevent skin dryness and razor burn as well. Just make sure you shave slowly since olive oil is a lot slicker than most shaving creams. Besides facial hair and leg hair, feel free to shave your armpits and even your arms with the oil.
Olive Oil Shaving Instructions:
Simply take your old olive oil and shave with that the way you normally would with shaving cream. Simple, right?!
Dried Feet Treatment
Winter can dry out your skin something fierce, leading to dry, flaky skin. If this is on the heels of your feet, you might not worry much until spring, when open-toed shoe season arrives. Rather than scour the grocery store or drug store aisles for a lotion that may or may not work on your feet, try that olive oil of yours that just expired.
Olive Oil Foot Rub Instructions:
Yes, even when you can’t eat the oil anymore, it can still restore moisture to hardened, dry skin like the bottoms of your feet (and elsewhere on the body). Pour out a few drops of the olive oil into your cupped palm and then rub it over your feet, making sure you get in as deep as you can. Then, kick back and wait for a half hour.
Step in the tub and run some water at a lukewarm temperature to clean your feet off. Towel dry gently and your feet should look and feel so much better. You’ll be ready to show them off in sandals, flip-flops, and more.
Nail Strengthener
Brittle nails that crack all the time are always a bummer, especially if you’re trying to grow your nails out or you just got a nice manicure. Instead of focusing so much on your nail length, right now, you should spend more time rebuilding the strength of your nails. This way, they’ll become less prone to breakage.
Olive Oil Nail Bath Instructions:
Olive oil can help to this end, the expired kind included. You want to let the olive oil warm up to room temperature in a bowl, or even put it in the microwave for short bursts until it’s lukewarm. Then, plunk your damaged nails into the bowl, staying like this for at least 15 minutes.
Once that time has elapsed, take your hands out of the bowl and rub the excess olive oil into your cuticles and nailbeds. Rotate your finger around the nail as you rub, repeating this a few times per nail to ensure the moisturizing qualities of the olive oil really penetrate the fingernail.
Damaged Hair Rescuer
We just wrote an incredibly extensive and in-depth post about all the wonders that olive oil can do for your hair. Even if your olive oil expires, you can still use it for a variety of hair treatments, such as split ends, broken hair, dandruff, lack of shine, or weakened hair.
Olive oil contains lots of good-for-your-hair ingredients, among them vitamins (A and E) and antioxidants. You may use the oil on its own or with a combination of other ingredients, including honey, banana, egg, avocado, baking soda, coconut oil, or even mayonnaise. Yes, that’s right, mayo.
Olive Oil Hair Enhancer Instructions:
Apply some olive oil through your strands, put on a shower cap, and then wait between 15 and 60 minutes. Rinse all the residue away, follow up with some conditioner, and your hair will be like salon-quality but without the appointment!
Skin Moisturizer
Dry feet aren’t the only parts of your body that can benefit from olive oil. Any other areas of dry skin can also receive some much-needed hydration. That’s because olive oil is like a humectant, which is a substance made just for maintaining moisture. Even if your olive oil expires, it doesn’t lose its moisturizing qualities.
Besides those properties, the antioxidants, vitamins (this time E and K), and other ingredients within olive oil can beautify skin while warding off wrinkles. Age spots and fine lines don’t stand a chance either when you regularly rely on olive oil as a moisturizer.
Olive Oil Skin Massage Instructions:
To get started, uncap your bottle of olive oil, pour out a couple of drops into your hand, and then rub the oil on your skin. Really massage it in there so the olive oil can get to work right away. Then, bathe or shower like you usually would.
Oh, and although you might think so, olive oil won’t clog your pores, so you don’t have to stress about breakouts.
Exfoliant
Don’t put away your expired olive oil just yet. You can also use it as the base of a great skin exfoliator.
Olive Oil Skin Exfoliant Instructions:
This time, you will have to combine the olive oil with other ingredients, such as ground coffee, sugar, and sea salt. Take a teaspoon of those three ingredients and mix them. Then, dump in your olive oil, about half a cup.
Dip your fingers into this exfoliant, put it on your face, and let it sit for at least 10 minutes, gently rubbing it in as you wait. Once you rinse, your skin should feel baby soft.
Related Questions
How long does unopened olive oil last?
Olive oil isn’t exactly cheap, especially if you’re going for the higher-quality, extra virgin variety. Of course you want to get the longest amount of time you can out of your olive oil. One idea you had was to keep the bottle closed. After all, if you don’t open the olive oil, then it can’t go bad, right?
Not exactly. Even if you never break the seal, your olive oil still does have a finite shelf life. Should you immediately stash the olive oil in the fridge upon getting it home from the grocery store, then it’s good for two years. If you put it in a dark, cool pantry, then you can also get two years out of your olive oil.
What’s the fun of not using olive oil, though? You still get a pretty long shelf life out of your oil once it’s opened, anywhere from 18 to 24 months. Just make sure you either keep it in the pantry (in dark and cool conditions) or your fridge. Plus, remember, you can still rely on it for lots of things past its expiration!
Can you reuse cooking oil?
If you just cooked with olive oil and you have plenty leftover, what’s the harm in putting it in another container and reusing the oil another time? It turns out, there’s a lot of harm.
According to IWACU English News, when you reuse your olive oil or any other cooking oil, you’re getting more cholesterol in your dishes than you would if you had added fresh olive oil each time.
Further, your white blood cells could be affected as your organs attack them, and there’s even a risk of cancer if you reuse cooking oil often enough. You’re much better off spending the extra money on your olive oil every now and again than risking your health to save a few bucks.
How should you dispose of expired olive oil?
If you’ve decided you’d rather not chance it and you want to get rid of your expired olive oil, that’s completely your choice. What would you have to do? Here are some steps to follow.
First, you must ensure the olive oil is at room temperature or, even better, cooled. If you’ve recently heated it up, added it to a deep fryer, or otherwise used it for cooking, then let the olive oil temperature come back down. Otherwise, you might burn yourself.
If you’re working with a large quantity of olive oil, then transport it to smaller bottles so it’s easier to throw away. Next, make sure the lid is on tight and then throw the bottle away in your trash can. Try to recycle the container it came in if you can.
There are also a few things you want to avoid doing. For one, never dump your olive oil in the sink. This may seem like an easy way to get rid of it, but it could block up your pipes, which would be very expensive to get fixed. You also don’t ever want to directly dump the olive oil in a trash bag. You’ll have lots of hungry, unwanted critters around your home.