Beyond the expiry date- how to know when your hair products have gone bad.

Hiya,
How's everyone doing? Hope well.  I am back with a new post I think will be helpful for fellow product junkies in the house. I cannot tell you how many products sitting in my products basket under my vanity are over one year old!

Now the issue is, most of these products don't have expiry dates written on them and though they are mostly made to have long shelf lives with the preservatives used, with the rise of a more organic approach and the use of less preservatives, I think we have to be conscious of the products we use especially after they have been on the shelf for a year... why I say this is because recently, I was moisturizing and sealing and humming away when I reached for an old bottle of a leave in(I will leave the name out) but I'd had it since 2012(covers face) and I wanted to use up the last bit, I poured the contents in my hand and what I saw is what inspired this post....


So here are signs that your hair/beauty product might have gone bad...

The smell is off...that's a tell tale sign, don't even think of using a product that smelt like coconut when you got it and now smells like rotten eggs!!


The consistency is off...if it was creamy and fluffy when you got it and it is now coagulating, runny or feels weird, time to bin it!


The color has changed...this is another tell tale sign, for me the product I mentioned earlier, changed from a cream color to a greenish algae color!!Gross!!


The packaging looks strange...the bottom might have started melting away, the cover might become rusty, the once strong to squeeze bottle is now as soft as a cheap plastic rubbers...it might be telling you it's outlived it's lifespan...

I wish a relative of mine read this before she lost all her hair because of expired relaxer!! I saw her after not seeing her for a while and all her hair had chopped off, I asked why and she said, she went to a salon to relax her hair, they got the relaxer that they were selling, opened the box and applied it to her hair, she instantly felt burns and asked for them to hurriedly wash it off her hair, as they did, all her hair fell off!!! She said one glance at the pack of relaxer told her that the relaxer must have been very old and very expired!!!


This point on packaging leads me to an observation I'd like to share; products in pump bottles or nozzles like this;