How long does Citrus fruit last in the pantry?
Turning the range into a date
Citrus fruit keeps 10 days in the pantry from purchase. The window here is 21 days, short enough that the day it went in is worth writing down.
- From purchase · in the pantryUse by10 days after the day you bought it
- From purchase · in the fridgeUse by10 days to 21 days after the day you bought it
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the answer comes from the pantry from the day of purchase figure: 10 days. The source fills 2 of its fields outside the freezer here, and every one of them is printed below. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as grape.
- In the freezernot recommended
- From purchase · in the pantry10 days
- From purchase · in the fridge10 days to 21 days
Can you freeze citrus fruit?
The USDA does not recommend freezing citrus fruit. It is not a safety warning, since food held at 0 °F stays safe, but it comes back changed. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if citrus fruit has gone bad
Go by the date first: citrus fruit keeps 10 days in the pantry. Mold, slime, a sour smell or soft dark spots mean it goes out; firm produce can be saved by cutting 1 inch around a small moldy spot, soft produce cannot.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety USDA FSIS: molds on food FDA: are you storing food safely FoodSafety.gov: the FoodKeeper app.
Is it still safe to eat, or just past its best?
The answer at the top of this page reads 10 days in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying it keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts it past its 10 days in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Items that behave the same way
All 6 of the 6 items nearest this item keep exactly as long as it does, 21 days, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
Where these numbers come from
Every storage time on this page is the USDA’s own published figure from the FoodKeeper data, one of the 9 it keeps per food, reproduced unchanged and never an estimate of ours. Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, each kind keeps its own windows, and the page names the kind its answer is for. The dates and multipliers are ours, computed from those ranges.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page. How the site is built is on the method page.
USDA index terms: citrus, Citrus fruit, clementine, clementines, fruit, grape, grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange, tangerine, tangerines
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.