For four years I lived in St Andrews, a tiny Scottish town an hour away from Edinburgh, where the sight of a carton of eggs in someone’s refrigerator is about as rare as a warm sunny day. Like everyone else, I kept my grocery store eggs right in their cardboard carton on the counter.

Though it may be jarring for some Americans, I still store my eggs this way. In the summer I come home from the farmers market with bunches of herbs and leafy greens, a quart or two of strawberries, and—because I’m an avid baker—usually two or three dozen eggs. Fitting my groceries into my fridge is an ongoing challenge, and I often find myself leaving eggs on the counter until I manage to free up some space in the fridge.

The routine has made me wonder: Why don’t more people store their eggs on the countertop? And when is the refrigerator really necessary? I reached out to a few experts (including a colleague with a chicken coop in her yard) and dove into some USDA paperwork in search of the best storage advice depending on the type of eggs you like to buy.

To minimize the risk of salmonella, most grocery store brands of American eggs are washed with 110º to 120ºF water, then sprayed with a sanitizing solution. Some are pasteurized, which takes this process a step further, heating the eggs to 140ºF to kill bacteria on both the insides and the outsides of the shells. While the process kills most microbes present on the shells, it also removes the shells’ natural coating, leaving them porous and more susceptible to harmful bacteria that could be floating around the grocery store or your kitchen. This makes it much easier for the eggs to spoil at room temperature, which is why the USDA mandates that all commercially produced eggs must be sanitized and refrigerated after.

Deion Jones, a former environmental health apecialist for Lane County Public Health in Oregon, tells me that once eggs have been refrigerated, it’s important to keep them cold. Sanitized eggs can only be out of the fridge for two hours maximum. “If pathogens exist on the food,” he warns, “they can start to proliferate.” At room temperature, bacteria may penetrate washed eggs shells that no longer have their protective coating. “That’s the sweet spot for microbial activity,” he adds.

If you are purchasing your eggs from a grocery store, you should 100% be refrigerating them. Need a room-temperature egg to bake that perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies? Keep an eye on the time and be sure to use any eggs within two hours of removing them from the fridge.

In countries where eggs aren’t sanitized (like most of Europe), it isn’t necessary to refrigerate the eggs, since they still have their protective coating on the shell. But this also applies to some of the smaller farms in the United States. According to the FDA’s Egg Safety Final Rule, small poultry farms—those with fewer than 3,000 chickens—are exempt from having to wash, sanitize, or pasteurize their eggs.

Epi’s Emily Farris has three backyard chickens and has kept her eggs at room temperature for up to two weeks. “Our chickens usually give us one egg each a day, and as a family of four, we go through them pretty quickly,” Emily tells me. “We collect the eggs every day and they go directly into a cute ceramic egg tray I keep on the counter. We don’t wash the eggs, but we do wash our hands after handling them—and we wash the egg holder regularly. This has been our routine for more than six years and so far, so good.”

While plenty of Americans with small-scale farms or chicken coops at home leave their eggs out on their counter, the FDA recommends always keeping your eggs refrigerated. Over email, Janell Goodwin, a press officer in the FDA’s media office, told me that storing any eggs at room temperature would go against their food safety recommendations. Refrigerating eggs keeps bacterial growth at bay—but also prolongs the shelf life and quality of eggs. According to the FDA, refrigerated eggs are best within three weeks.

A study published in Poultry Science by Deana Jones, PhD, in 2018 found that the refrigerated eggs stored for 15 weeks were fresher and of a higher quality than their room temperature counterparts. According to the USDA, “unwashed eggs stored at room temperature degraded from Grade AA to B in just a week, and they also lost 15 percent of their weight over the 15 weeks.” The highest quality eggs—Grade AA—have thick, viscous whites, round yolks, and clean shells. Grade A eggs have slightly runnier whites, and Grade B eggs have thin egg whites. As eggs sit and age, their interiors start to degrade, and as moisture evaporates through the shell, the egg loses volume—a process that is sped up when eggs are kept at room temperature. Jones and her peers found that both unwashed and washed eggs fared better under refrigeration: As long as eggs were stored at 39.2ºF (4ºC), treatments such as washing or oiling did not impact the quality of the eggs.

If you’re unsure whether or not you have to refrigerate your eggs, ask your farmer at the market or look up your favorite brand to see if they have recommendations on how to keep your eggs safe and fresher longer. And if you’re out of fridge space, headed out of town, or you know you just won’t be able to use them all, crack open the shells and freeze the contents in an ice cube tray or muffin tin and defrost them in the fridge the night before you want to use them for your next frittata or snacking cake.

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