I'm still fairly new (~2 months) to regularly shaving with a straight razor. I haven't really had any problems so far, and it has been a blast learning all about the process as well as honing the razors. I do have a question about stropping though which I thought I'd throw out there.

If I strop the blade and then wait several hours before shaving, will I lose some of the benefit of the stropping?

Someone posted something about giving the razor a day or two to rest between shaves, so I read up on that debate. It did leave me a bit curious about stropping though. I usually don't strop the blade after shaving, I just clean/dry/oil it. I usually do about 6 round trips on the fabric part of my strop and then about 50 round trips on the smooth leather side immediately before shaving. I'm curious though about what would happen if I stropped the blade and then got distracted for a long while before actually doing the shave. Let's say hypothetically I was planning to shave at night and I did my stropping routine. But then I got a phone call or something like that to distract me. I end up going to bed without shaving despite the fact that I stropped the blade and was prepped for a shave. I wake up in the morning to shave, but what should I expect? Is the blade just ready to go from the stropping I gave it the night before? Or have I lost all the benefit of stropping because of the time that has elapsed? Or maybe I just need a few passes to get it back to where it was. Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? I almost missed shaving one morning due to distraction, and it made me wonder what the shave would have been like if I had to do it that night instead. Perhaps some of the people that strop their blade after they shave can weigh in. Thanks!