Cleaning up my apartment, I just found a few dozen condoms, dating from who-knows-when?, and they seem pretty well sealed up to me, so I’m not sure if I shouldn’t throw them out or keep them:
they are mostly inside of boxes (Ramses 6-packs), still sealed with tape marked “tamper resistant” across the part where you’d crack them open, and inside those sealed boxes, I assume the individual condoms are further sealed within plastic.
I also found some loose condoms (all of them were inside a briefcase I haven’[t used in quite a while–not sure what I was thinking at the time), still sealed in plastic. Are the double-sealed ones any more more likely to be reliable than the loose ones? I’d feel awful stupid pitching condoms out that were perfectly good, but if I can’t date any of these, what to do? Would you pitch them:
a) never, as long as they’d been sealed
b) after 5 years, which is the least old they could be
c) after 10 years, which is probably the oldest they could be
4) now, on general principles
General guidelines are two years, and shorter if they are exposed to heat and light.
Unless you’re posting this from a public library or something, you have enough money for a computer, so you should have enough to splurge on some new condoms.
Ramses? They don’t even make those anymore! You might want to keep them, strictly as a collector’s item, but you never want to commit the unforgivable faux pas of using outdated condoms.
If I were around back then, I think I would have gone with Napoleons. I would have *avoided *De-Luxe Blue-Ribbon, which features a hideous, terrifying dog that looks like it’s from Resident Evil.
I once found a bunch of old condoms during spring cleaning. I carried a few in my pocket and discretely left them in odd places. Behind a friends futon, etc.
