One late night, a friend IM-ed me and asked about the shelf life of nail polish. You see, just like me, she does her nails DIY style rather than lavishing her bucks in nail salons. We both admitted to stockpiling bottles of lacquer in cabinets, drawers, and boxes—anywhere you can safely store limited-edition Chanel offerings to go-to colors from Essie, Nars, OPI, and Zoya to generic local Asian brands — but there was bit of indecision between us as to how long we could feasibly keep up the hoarding before these backstocks go bad. And so, reinforcements were called via the worldwideweb. “Two years,” says Dashing Diva’s head nail tech, Pattie Yankee, who explained that after that time, polishes have a tendency to become thick, sticky, and stringy. Yankee recommends keeping your stash in a cool place and flipping the bottles from right side up to upside down every couple of months to keep them at their best. As for the urban legend that refrigeration will keep that bottle of Jade alive forever, no such luck. “It will not extend the life, but it will keep it consistent,” Yankee says. Just like make-up, polishes do have an expiration. And though, again just like make-up, you need to get rid of it when the expiry date comes, even if it's a Chanel splurge. As they say, if you love something, let it go