Just Bento

15lbs is 6.8kgs. Where I live a small bag is usually around half a kg (500g) so I'm guessing the same as Bronwyn, that you'll get through it within 6 or 7 months (when I was single 15lbs wold have lasted me around 3 months).
If the rice is white and not brown (bran oils can go a bit rancid when stored over long periods) it's unlikely you'll notice much of a difference between the same rice now and how it tastes in September/October... although you might need a smidgen more water to cook it with then, then again, you may not notice this difference either.

I agree, the fridge isn't the place to store raw white rice. Somewhere dark, dry and where flying or crawling pests can't get at it is all you need.

As neither my husband or I drive, and in order to save money, our backs and delivery costs, we've been buying rice in bulk lately. I bought two 10kg bags of rice in February (about 45lbs). From the looks of it we get through one of these every two months as we're just coming to the end of the second bag. I'll probably get three bags on my next order, so these should last us the same amount of time as your 15lb bag - my guess is that the rice we get will be from exactly the same batch as before, this means I'm expecting our rice to taste fine after 10 months - and that's on top of the time it took to get from the USA to the UK.

The new US grown crops won't be harvested until sometime in September, so I think it's fine to have rice stored until the Autumn/Fall. Once we reach October I'll look at acquiring rice from the new crops.

Bronwyn, are there rice harvests going on in NZ or Austalia? I'm not obsessed enough to look for new rice from the South but I am curious.

Rice lasts a good long time, I'm sure you'll be fine. A small bag has to be at least a pound, right? Then your 15 pound bag will last 30 weeks. That's a bit more than 6 months, and rice has to last at least that long between harvests anyway.

Why would you want to put it in the fridge? I'd think that would be the last place you'd want to keep it. You want to put it somewhere dry.

Thanks guys! I actually found a store that offered smaller bags of good quality rice at the same price per pound as the large bag I found online. Thanks for letting me know about the fridge- I thought I read that it was important to keep rice in the fridge.

You only need to keep rice in the fridge if it's been cooked, it goes a bit sticky though; I wouldn't eat it plain, it'd have to be fried for me.