If your spirit animal is Titus Andromedon or Beyonce, you love lemonade. However, you cannot make lemonade with hard lemons. Lemons are a great fruit that make amazing beverages, taste great in food, work as beauty products, and can clean your apartment, but you have got to use them as fast as possible. I have always needed a lesson on how to store lemons, as I can never use them as quickly as I need to.

How to store lemons is dependent on how they are cut, so here is the how-to on preserving lemons when they are whole versus when they are cut.

Storing Whole Lemons

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Jocelyn Hsu

According to the Kitchn, storing lemons in a bowl in your kitchen is actually the worst place to store them. This is because they will only last a week in the open air. Their fix? Place your lemons in a sealed bag, squish the air out, and store them in the fridge. This will keep your lemons full of juice for weeks.

Storing Cut Lemons

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Caroline Liu

Lemons that are cut is a similar process that I learned from my mom. The biggest goal here is to keep air away from the lemon, especially when they are cut. The best way to do this is to take plastic wrap and wrap them around the lemon slices. Then, to utilize the tip from the Kitchn again, take those pieces and keep them in a baggie in the fridge. Once they are cut, do try to use them in a timely manner.

Using these tricks will help keep your lemons fresh and juicy for when you are wanting lemonade. Storing lemons properly is not a hard trick to learn. You can also apply these same tricks for limes and other citrus fruits. Now go squeeze some lemons, put on a yellow dress, and sip on some lemonade.