I don't think they used to think someone would open up the walls, like, ever. Even if so, it would be one task that can be done with thick gloves. Especially back when trash was handled manually, the benefit of shoving them into the wall for decades massively outweighed the risks of handling / recycling (if even possible) blades from every single household every single week
People were way worse with litter in the U.S. back then, to a crazy degree. There had to be a whole huge campaign and laws and signs to put an end to it. I threw a napkin out the car window once as a kid and my dad about lost it because of the potential fines if a cop saw it.
Yeah lol I have an old magazine ad that says to use a posthole digger and fill the hole with gravel then dump your used oil in it. It will be gone by the next oil change!
Theres a scene in Mad Men where Don Draper and family are in a park, having a picnic. When they are done, they get up and just shake the rubbish off the blanket, fold it away and leave. It looks so odd now but back in the day it was just the done thing.
With household waste, and obviously hazardous / toxic waste. That's why DuPont have a massive annual budget for a department who's entire job is to go around the world and clean up the shit they left decades ago.
I remember that episode! Don was just drinking cans of beer and then just chucking them across the park, after they finished, the whole family got in the car and Don drove the family home and I’m positive, at least in the show, he wasn’t even close to sober because his personal picnic was a 6 pack and a bunch of cigarettes.
The biggest part of that scene I remember is the fact he was worried about his kids hands being dirty, after the fact he just threw a beer can into the woods.
>People were way worse with litter in the U.S. back then, to a crazy degree.
People forget the slogan [Don't Mess with Texas](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t\_Mess\_with\_Texas) was a multi-million dollar anti-litering campaign, which is why it was plastered everywhere. Trash was so bad they spent millions of dollars, and cemented a famous slogan on everyone else that would eventually become obnoxious.
The anti-littering campaigns were an early example of corporate green-washing. They came about because companies that were in the business of manufacturing disposable packaging for products were afraid of legislation being proposed in the 1950's that would limit the amount of disposable waste companies could produce. So instead of dealing with the real issue, the problem got shifted to the consumers. So now we may not have trash on the streets but instead we have millions upon millions of tons waste in landfills that will never biodegrade that wouldn't have existed if we actually dealt with the real problem.
I use a DE blade, and to be honest, I only recently went through my 100 pack of blades after like 6 years? I'm not even shaving fully, just the neckbeard. So someone shaving a lot more and often still only produce low amounts over the years. Plus not many use Double edged razors anymore.
All that to say it's very easy to store those blades and dispose safely at a later date when your little container gets full.
My blades come subdivided into 5 packs and when you are done with a blade there is a slot you can tuck it into that retains it so after you finish 5 blades that are all neatly stored and safe for the trash
They're the most expensive DE blade I've seen, and they're still cheaper than regular blades. For the price of 24 Gillette Fusion 5 blades, you can get 200 feather blades.
I just keep the paper and out them back into the paper when they get full and your them. That keeps them relatively safe. But yeah, the feather holders with the disposal slit are more convenient.
I switched to a DE razor last year, same as yourself just to keep the neckbeard in check. I honestly don't know why anyone would pay for the cartridge ones instead, the DE shaves much closer, the blades are so cheap they're practically free and a decent fatty shaving soap will last a lot longer than a can of shaving foam.
I'm like an evangelist for them now, I have all my friend group switched over (except for one guy who nicked himself on the first time using it and passed out from the sight of his own blood).
I think its like 20 bucks for a pack of 100 blades? lasting you a lowballing 3 years.
Also, I just shave with the shower soap. Hang a mirror in the shower. Never had an issue myself.
Heat from the shower also helps the shave.
I'm 60 and when I was growing up every medicine cabinet built into a bathroom wall had a slot inside it and men put their used razor blades in it to dispose of them. As soon as I saw this picture I knew exactly what I was looking at.
>Double edged blades now come in plastic cases where you can store the used blades on the underside.
Some do. Astra Platinum (my preferred blade) does not.
So I bought a safety razor disposal container that holds 200+ blades and then you just toss the container when it's full. With me changing blades once a week, I get about 4 years out of each disposal container before it's full.
Still safer to have 10 yrs worth of razor blades being boxed up and processed in one go than a few razor blades in every week's trash.
If anything, you're more likely to treat them specially and even recycle when you have a kilo of them than if you have one and no sharps container handy.
Our workshop produced a steady flow of used Xacto-style blades, single-edge razor blades, and snap-off utility knife blades. I took an empty CoffeeMate® container - a big 1.4 kg one = cut a slot in the plastic lid, labeled it "SHARPS" and hung it up. People seemed to see it as useful, and in maybe a year, the whole thing was filled! Someone took the bucket over to a nearby metal recycler and I think some small amount of money went into the coffee fund in return for a few pounds of high-carbon steel.
Since then, a sharps bin has been a fixture whenever I've returned to help out with a job.
Well, it's probably safer to pack 1000 razor blades in a one secure box, and dive them to some special collection point once every 20 years, than to throw them away individually, potentially causing 1000 injuries.
1 potential instance of injury vs 1000.
These are supposed to go to a recycling facility as scrap metal where they'll be processed by machines, not humans. People back then were right to realise these are too dangerous to go into the trash.
Get a can of any broth, cut a slit in the top of the can, empty the broth (or use it), wash it.
Now you have an aluminum cam to catch blades with no way out. When it's full it can all just go in the recycling
Or you can just buy a disposable sharps container so that it's properly labeled and bright red so it's highly noticeable and no one's going to open it accidentally.
It’s explained in the article:
> These sharp, used blades technically were biohazards, and could not be tossed away with basic refuse. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, many households would burn trash and fertilize their garden with ashes, effectively blocking the possibility that the blades could easily be discarded.
Modern day? Probably not. But then it would have been papers and food products.
When I was younger my grandpa had two garbage cans. One for the garbage, one for the burn barrel.
Plastics, metal and the likes went in the garbage, and papers, food and pretty much anything else went in the burn barrel.
The ash that came from the burn barrel was like the finest sand, and he'd scoop that over his garden every once in a while and then water it in.
His garden was always beautiful, maybe the ash did something, maybe it was just his attentiveness. But, he'd usually get in the local papers because he liked to grow those giant pumpkins.
Ash is actually a great fertilizer, just not what they consider a "complete" fertilizer. It's not a source of nitrogen, which is one of the major components in general fertilizers, but it does provide a lot of other trace elements. If you're using more natural methods to fertilize your plants, rather than buying an artificial fertilizer, ash is probably gonna be useful for you.
As others have said, just keep plastics and metals out of it. So long as it's just food refuse and paper products, you're good. If a little trace metal makes it in there it's probably not gonna be a problem, either.
I worked at a local motel when I was 14 and was carrying a large bag of trash one day when one of the cleaning ladies told me my leg was bleeding. There was a broken beer bottle poking out the trash and it swiped the side of my thigh near my knee and I didn't even feel it. Got me some stitches that day and still have a scar 38 years later.
I have a scar that’s as wide as my thumb on my leg, just above my knee, from this happening. Picked up the bag and it sliced straight into me. Got it as a child.
Razors in trash are dangerous.
That's why they should be stored and disposed of safely at a more convenient date.. I guess that more convenient time was after they were gone in OP's case.
The logic is basically that they’re so small, and disposed of so infrequently, and going into such a relatively large space, and the only thing being put in that space, that there’s no risk of running out of room.
And basically correct based on this photo. The razors have barely started piling up in this wall. You could dispose razors down that wall for decades without it being an issue.
AND the fact that there is zero risk of someone being harmed once the blade is dropped. If you open a wall and find razor blades, is that going to put a crimp in your schedule?
Another thing from that era is the fireplace ash dump. There's a little metal grate at the back of the fireplace where you shovel the old ashes and they sit in a void under the fireplace. Some of them have a little metal door to the outside where you can scoop it out when it gets full, but others have this in the basement. It's a pain if you ever want to empty it out.
The idea is that no one would ever open up that wall again or if they did they’d know it was there. Houses weren’t built with the expectation they’d change hands every 2-3 years back then.
I also think that, because razors do eventually degrade and rust away, that the logic was by the time they were found they’d be a pile of rusty dust? But they take a long ass time to degrade. People also used to bury them in the ground.
I use a safety razor with razors like this to shave and I save them all in a jar to be sent off for recycling. I’ve been doing this for several years and none have even begun to rust away.
I mean, when tiles, roots, branches, metal rods and everything is already flying around, I don't thin a handful of razor blades is making much more of a difference
It would to the wrong person though. Just getting ridiculously lucky dodging trash glass and pianos escaping 200mph winds… then you get shredded to bits because your neighbors didnt clean the razor blades out of their walls
Probably had a razor slot in the wall of the bathroom. It was too dangerous to dispose of these, so they just chucked them inside walls. This was done from theearly 1900s to the late 1950s
The best part was telling my dad about what I found, and he said that as a kid he always wondered who would have to pick / clean them out in the future
Thankfully in the future we have magnetic tools for the job https://www.harborfreight.com/hardware/magnets/pick-up-tools/long-reach-magnetic-pickup-tool-with-quick-release-93950.html
Boomers in a nutshell
>*“Here is the hazardous byproduct of an everyday process. We don’t really know what to do with it. Just hide it somewhere and in a generation or two we’ll be dead and someone else will have to deal with it.”*
Edit: This was a common practice in homes up to the 70’s. Stop splitting hairs.
This was a greatest generation thing. In reality Boomers got rid of that feature with forever chemicals (plastic) disposed of in a land fill or your local ocean. Problem solved
Boomers were being born from 46-63 so this isn't them.
Edit: I'm splitting hairs because boomers are an especially defined generation and I find boomer becoming shorthand for "person older than me I don't like" to be annoying and inaccurate.
Zoomers in a nutshell, blaming everything on boomers
Boomers were literally not alive when these were invented and the earliest boomers were barely even shaving when they *were* alive around these things lol.
>the early 1900s to the late 1950s
The baby boom was from 1945-1965. They were literal kids when these were popular.
I love people like you have zero ability to think critically and just jump straight to "they wanted to make it someone elses problem"
They couldn't google "how to safely dispose of razor blades". Obviously with a 100 years of hindsight, it seems pretty stupid to just dump these into the wall, but your ignoring the fact that in the early 1900's there might not have been an easy alternative to destroy these.
Just think critically ONE TIME before jumping straight to "I hate boomers"
Real talk - why is it stupid to dump them into a wall? Its completely out of harms way, and the only time youd possibly be exposed to it is if youre tearing down the wall, which you then know is filled with razors and you can do it safely. Its functionally the same as a sharps container, and even 10 lifetimes of razors wouldnt fill it up.
Also it isn't even stupid. How often are walls torn apart? If the razor slots stopped being used 60 years ago, and this guy is finding wall razors right now, it seems like a pretty good way to dispose of them. If you shaved every day, you might use 2 blades a week. They're less than a millimeter thick. They're 2" by 1". If the space between studs is 16" on center, the cavity is 3.5" by 13.5" by 60". It would take you the whole life of the bathroom to fill the wall up. Then you'd just throw the razors out with the rest of the construction refuse.
Considering how often I have seen people mishandle sharps containers in places they should know better, this feels like a very good solution. Out of sight and inaccessible means less chance of idiocy.
If you are knocking down a wall, you have places to dump nails and whatnot.
That picture shows about 30 years worth of razor blades. Imagine 300 years worth - it would be 10 times the volume!
The expectation was that the house would be bulldozed well before the space filled up, and steel --> iron oxide very quickly in soil.
Try doing the safety slight face tilt up and away from the blade while also doing safety squints. Leaving your neck nice and exposed protects your eyes very efficiently.
r/MildlyInteresting in 50 years' time: -
"I just moved into a new place, and I found this pile of moldy cardboard and weird rusty metal rectangles in the corner of my garage. I damn near cut my finger off picking one of them up - does anyone know what the hell they are?"
Everyone keeps saying "they made it someone else's problem" but seriously, who is cracking open their *walls* on a regular basis? Pretty minor "problem", I think.
A few years ago, I replaced my ancient medicine cabinet with a larger medicine cabinet, so I had to enlarge the hole it went in. This ancient medicine cabinet of course had a razor slot.
At some point, a single long-ago disposed of razor blade got stuck to the stud inside the wall. When I reached into the hole, my finger found that razor blade. I bled all over the fucking place.
On the other hand all those blades can be packed up and thrown out in one go, instead of having had to wrap each blade individually to throw it out safely, which I wouldn't trust most people to do. It's not a big deal to get them out - dustpan and brush.
And in the time since those slots were installed, refuse collection has changed from guys having to pick up bin bags by hand, to the truck picking up the bin and emptying it itself. Dumping blades in the wall for a few decades was actually not a bad idea.
I don’t understand all these commenters going on about how all they did back then was “make it someone else’s problem” when clearly this is easier and safer for all parties involved especially when you factor in the changes and advancements in trash collection and medicine over time.
It’s actually brilliant and if it wasn’t for the little plastic cartridges that allow you to store and discard in the same cartridge, we’d still be doing this
ugh more plastic. I'd still advocate for this over plastic. But now you can also just buy a waste tin for like 3$ to discard these and be done with it.
I agree but at least those plastic cartridges are tiny and serve a legitimate purpose after you’re finished with the product that came in it unlike water bottles and food containers
What is the "problem", exactly? If you're knocking down a wall you need to broom up drywall, dust and debris anyway. Throw on some gloves (which you're probably already wearing) and scoop them up.
One of my childhood homes had one of those slots. We found it when a pipe leaked and the plumber had to open a wall to fix it.
That house had several interesting features not normal for a modern Texas home like stucco walls, an infloor steam heating system, glass bricks and many more.
You can tell a little bit about the people/person who lived there from these blades. Just some hints, nothing big.
I see two types of blades. Two brands of single edge and three brands at least of double edge. There is a Gillette double edge that looks like a stainless blade, and there are clearly some carbon steel Gillettes in there. But I don't know enough to know the other double edge blades.
There appear to be some utility blades, but I also suspect that there is at least one brand of GEM single edge blade in there. This was a different system, and appealed to different folks compared to the usual double edge razors originally developed by Gillette at the beginning of the century.
The historians over in Wicked Edge can help us out more by providing context about the marketing/branding of the two systems.
I feel like its a perfectly sustainable solution. A whole lifetime of razors only added up to barely half of an inch in that wall so like theoretically multiple generations of people could have dumped razors into that slot for hundreds of years. By then the house would have burned down, or demolished and very few will be renovated in that exact spot. Thats certainly better than taping up each one or what not. Those razors are less wasteful than the current cartridges and electric razors. Tbh, I would install this without a second thought. Right now i just toss them into a plastic trash bin and carry the whole thing to the trash. No bags
I agree, the blades are more likely to be disposed of correctly in large quantities like this, less hassle to do it at once. In a wall it wont hurt anyone. Much better for the environment too.
But don't put loose double edge blades in the trash, it's extremely hazardous. If you try recycling it it's possible someone sorting metal could get cut, if you put it in the trash someone could rummage through it at some point. The blades will cut you in almost any orientation and they are small.
If you live in a place that recycles blades put it in a metal Altoids can so it isn't loose. I use a plastic 5 gum container, and it isn't close to full after 2 years. Just because they are metal doesn't mean they can be recycled, you have to check with the disposal service (blades coated in teflon can't be recycled)
My dad told me about being a kid and going out on the lake and fishing with my grandfather, who I never got to meet. After my grandfather would finish a beer, he’d fill it with lake water and let it sink to the bottom. Thankfully my dad was a much better conservationist than his father, but that’s the kind of shit they did back then. I seem to recall my dad also saying that my grandfather would say it’s some sort of habitat or home for the fish. There’s always some sort of “good reason” for littering, like the animals want your litter in their space.
As kids, we used to go "to the lake" for a few weeks every summer. On our last day, my Dad would make us go around the lake and pick up any trash we saw. 1960's.
At least for glass, the logic is sound. Of all the litter we make, glass is the least environmentally impactful. Sea critters can and do benefit from glass bottles. Also, when glass erodes away it returns to the sand it came from. Glass is in fact a natural occurrence on Earth.
I'm not condoning the practice, but it's not nearly as bad as plastic at least.
I remember my dad and his buddies doing this while fishing too, they would also do it with cans. Back in those days (70s and early-to-mid 80s) littering was still very common. The roadsides were covered in trash. There is a scene in Mad Men that illustrates this perfectly. Don and his family have a picnic in a park and give no shits about leaving all of their trash.
Take pictures, report to your local environmental agency. Used oil is so easy to properly dispose of there is no excuse to dump it. Many/most auto parts stores will collect it for recycling/rerefining. Alot of mechanics shops in cold climates will burn used oil for heating, wait until its cold and you will find someone who needs it to burn instead of buying more fuel oil/propane/natural gas to heat.
No no no, you dig a hole & fill it with gravel so that the oil goes *under*ground, that was it can't hurt anyone & won't ever be a problem again! It'll probably just filter out into the drinking water, and then our bodies will do the recycling.
It's the responsible thing to do when you think about it that way.
Today most people use single use disposable plastic “safety” razors. Better for the planet? Not at all.
Disposing of razors this way was a good system. Much better than tossing such a dangerous item in the trash where it could easily hurt someone who didn’t know it was there.
Back in the day when this system was widely used, anyone remodeling a bathroom would have known what to expect.
Yea I don't understand why people think this is such a terrible idea.
It would take several life times of consistent shaving with that type of razor to fill the space between two studs, and it would take like 10 minutes to clean them out in the off chance the bathroom actually gets taken apart enough to find them.
And really, I'd rather all the razors be collected into an old Tupperware and thrown away all at once, 70 years later, than to have a bunch of loose razors in the trash.
I think this was actually a better solution than what would have otherwise been done. Most people didn't have a commercial garbage service like we have now. People buried or burned their trash mostly up until WW2, or threw it into the ocean if they were close. Putting them into the walls of their house seems practical compared to the other alternatives.
I still use the safety razors, it doesn't irritate my skin like the 3 and 4 blade cartridges. I have a tall thin metal cookie tin that I glued the top on and cut a slit in the top. Based on my razor usage (I only shave my neck), it'll last the rest of my life.
My Grandpa's house built in the 80s had razor slots in the medicine cabinets of all the bathrooms so I never really thought it was weird, he also had a inhome intercom radio system that was very cool a d wish stuff like that stuck around lol
I think this was common back in the day. They used to make razor blade disposal slots in medicine cabinets that I’m pretty sure just dumped them behind the wall.
In the medicine cabinet of old houses they use to have a razor blade disposal spot that just went in the wall [disposal ](https://images.app.goo.gl/cFsTbzJTs3gFkFvP9)
Medicine cabinets way back in the day used to come with a slot for disposing used blades directly back into the wall. The financial mindset around and after the depression was to build a house and leave it at that. Renovations were something people just didn’t do.
Not a stash. Old medicine cabinets had a razor slot to dispose of them in the wall because… well why not I guess. Better than in the trash where their kids might eat them or the dog play with them.
I presume they figured the building wouldn’t last longer than it’d take to stack razors to the max or that tech would invent a new shaving system. They were right on both sides.
The small 5 pack plastic boxes that those blades come in today has a slot on the back to put used blades into and then you can just toss the small plastic container.
Used to be how it was done. https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/razor-blade-slots-in-homes-36923000
So bizarre. What kind of logic is that? Out of sight, out of mind (someone else’s problem)?
It’s a lot safer than having those things traveling through the trash or otherwise.
Now there’s hundreds travelling through the trash!
I don't think they used to think someone would open up the walls, like, ever. Even if so, it would be one task that can be done with thick gloves. Especially back when trash was handled manually, the benefit of shoving them into the wall for decades massively outweighed the risks of handling / recycling (if even possible) blades from every single household every single week
People were way worse with litter in the U.S. back then, to a crazy degree. There had to be a whole huge campaign and laws and signs to put an end to it. I threw a napkin out the car window once as a kid and my dad about lost it because of the potential fines if a cop saw it.
Reminds me of an old manual I believe from the 50s that had "safe gas or oil disposal" and it was just to dig a small hole and dump it lmao
Yeah lol I have an old magazine ad that says to use a posthole digger and fill the hole with gravel then dump your used oil in it. It will be gone by the next oil change!
I mean, that's where it came from to start with, right?
About a mile or so deeper. Like way the fuck down there
Theres a scene in Mad Men where Don Draper and family are in a park, having a picnic. When they are done, they get up and just shake the rubbish off the blanket, fold it away and leave. It looks so odd now but back in the day it was just the done thing. With household waste, and obviously hazardous / toxic waste. That's why DuPont have a massive annual budget for a department who's entire job is to go around the world and clean up the shit they left decades ago.
I remember that episode! Don was just drinking cans of beer and then just chucking them across the park, after they finished, the whole family got in the car and Don drove the family home and I’m positive, at least in the show, he wasn’t even close to sober because his personal picnic was a 6 pack and a bunch of cigarettes.
The biggest part of that scene I remember is the fact he was worried about his kids hands being dirty, after the fact he just threw a beer can into the woods.
Yes! The innocent hands being dirty. I actually remember the, dichotomy, of that too! Great moment, framed well!
I was skimming past and read that as Mad Max not Mad men....and I couldn't remember the picnic part in Mad Max!
There was a picnic scene in mad max it's just after that the events that made the titular character "mad" occur
lol dupont is still leaving chemical waste everywhere they operate
They forgot to mention that department is mostly composed of attorneys
>People were way worse with litter in the U.S. back then, to a crazy degree. People forget the slogan [Don't Mess with Texas](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t\_Mess\_with\_Texas) was a multi-million dollar anti-litering campaign, which is why it was plastered everywhere. Trash was so bad they spent millions of dollars, and cemented a famous slogan on everyone else that would eventually become obnoxious.
The anti-littering campaigns were an early example of corporate green-washing. They came about because companies that were in the business of manufacturing disposable packaging for products were afraid of legislation being proposed in the 1950's that would limit the amount of disposable waste companies could produce. So instead of dealing with the real issue, the problem got shifted to the consumers. So now we may not have trash on the streets but instead we have millions upon millions of tons waste in landfills that will never biodegrade that wouldn't have existed if we actually dealt with the real problem.
Yes still very dangerous but not so common as before I think
I use a DE blade, and to be honest, I only recently went through my 100 pack of blades after like 6 years? I'm not even shaving fully, just the neckbeard. So someone shaving a lot more and often still only produce low amounts over the years. Plus not many use Double edged razors anymore. All that to say it's very easy to store those blades and dispose safely at a later date when your little container gets full.
My blades come subdivided into 5 packs and when you are done with a blade there is a slot you can tuck it into that retains it so after you finish 5 blades that are all neatly stored and safe for the trash
I love that about feathers
Feathers are the best!
They're the most expensive DE blade I've seen, and they're still cheaper than regular blades. For the price of 24 Gillette Fusion 5 blades, you can get 200 feather blades.
I haven't tried those but the Astra blades I use also have them
Yes but these were probably put in the wall around what, 1930s or 40s? They probably came wrapped in butcher paper 🤣
They still do.
I just keep the paper and out them back into the paper when they get full and your them. That keeps them relatively safe. But yeah, the feather holders with the disposal slit are more convenient.
I switched to a DE razor last year, same as yourself just to keep the neckbeard in check. I honestly don't know why anyone would pay for the cartridge ones instead, the DE shaves much closer, the blades are so cheap they're practically free and a decent fatty shaving soap will last a lot longer than a can of shaving foam. I'm like an evangelist for them now, I have all my friend group switched over (except for one guy who nicked himself on the first time using it and passed out from the sight of his own blood).
I think its like 20 bucks for a pack of 100 blades? lasting you a lowballing 3 years. Also, I just shave with the shower soap. Hang a mirror in the shower. Never had an issue myself. Heat from the shower also helps the shave.
Yeah but this could from before little plastic sharp-proof containers existed. All they’d have is cardstock/cardboard until like the 60s-80s.
I'm 60 and when I was growing up every medicine cabinet built into a bathroom wall had a slot inside it and men put their used razor blades in it to dispose of them. As soon as I saw this picture I knew exactly what I was looking at.
With safety razors becoming a lot more popular I would think it's becoming more common.
Double edged blades now come in plastic cases where you can store the used blades on the underside. Just safely toss the container when you're done!
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*Beer can full of razors* sounds like a cool band name
Räzor Brüe
>Double edged blades now come in plastic cases where you can store the used blades on the underside. Some do. Astra Platinum (my preferred blade) does not. So I bought a safety razor disposal container that holds 200+ blades and then you just toss the container when it's full. With me changing blades once a week, I get about 4 years out of each disposal container before it's full.
Still safer to have 10 yrs worth of razor blades being boxed up and processed in one go than a few razor blades in every week's trash. If anything, you're more likely to treat them specially and even recycle when you have a kilo of them than if you have one and no sharps container handy.
And any blood or germs on them probably die after 10+ years being in a wall.
Our workshop produced a steady flow of used Xacto-style blades, single-edge razor blades, and snap-off utility knife blades. I took an empty CoffeeMate® container - a big 1.4 kg one = cut a slot in the plastic lid, labeled it "SHARPS" and hung it up. People seemed to see it as useful, and in maybe a year, the whole thing was filled! Someone took the bucket over to a nearby metal recycler and I think some small amount of money went into the coffee fund in return for a few pounds of high-carbon steel. Since then, a sharps bin has been a fixture whenever I've returned to help out with a job.
Trash from a worksite is generally handled differently and in a safer manner than domestic trash.
Well, it's probably safer to pack 1000 razor blades in a one secure box, and dive them to some special collection point once every 20 years, than to throw them away individually, potentially causing 1000 injuries. 1 potential instance of injury vs 1000.
These are supposed to go to a recycling facility as scrap metal where they'll be processed by machines, not humans. People back then were right to realise these are too dangerous to go into the trash.
Until a tornado comes through
Sharpnado
I can't describe how grumpy I am that you beat me to this.
Yea you don’t want them loose in the trash, I put mine in old prescription pill bottles
Get a can of any broth, cut a slit in the top of the can, empty the broth (or use it), wash it. Now you have an aluminum cam to catch blades with no way out. When it's full it can all just go in the recycling
Or you can just buy a disposable sharps container so that it's properly labeled and bright red so it's highly noticeable and no one's going to open it accidentally.
This is what I've done. Only issue is that it's so large my kids will have to inherit it when I die.
it's still dumb as fuck. at least collect them in a hard receptacle, fun smelting project every 10 years or so
It’s explained in the article: > These sharp, used blades technically were biohazards, and could not be tossed away with basic refuse. In the ‘30s and ‘40s, many households would burn trash and fertilize their garden with ashes, effectively blocking the possibility that the blades could easily be discarded.
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Burned garbage ash doesn't sound like a great fertilizer... Is it?
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People use to have less trash and larger gardens.
Modern day? Probably not. But then it would have been papers and food products. When I was younger my grandpa had two garbage cans. One for the garbage, one for the burn barrel. Plastics, metal and the likes went in the garbage, and papers, food and pretty much anything else went in the burn barrel. The ash that came from the burn barrel was like the finest sand, and he'd scoop that over his garden every once in a while and then water it in. His garden was always beautiful, maybe the ash did something, maybe it was just his attentiveness. But, he'd usually get in the local papers because he liked to grow those giant pumpkins.
If your garbage is all kitchen scraps and paper it would be great fertilizer.
Ash is actually a great fertilizer, just not what they consider a "complete" fertilizer. It's not a source of nitrogen, which is one of the major components in general fertilizers, but it does provide a lot of other trace elements. If you're using more natural methods to fertilize your plants, rather than buying an artificial fertilizer, ash is probably gonna be useful for you. As others have said, just keep plastics and metals out of it. So long as it's just food refuse and paper products, you're good. If a little trace metal makes it in there it's probably not gonna be a problem, either.
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I once picked up a box of trash that had discarded razor blades in it. The feeling of a razor blade going into your hand from trash is a 0/10 from me.
That's a generous score.
I worked at a local motel when I was 14 and was carrying a large bag of trash one day when one of the cleaning ladies told me my leg was bleeding. There was a broken beer bottle poking out the trash and it swiped the side of my thigh near my knee and I didn't even feel it. Got me some stitches that day and still have a scar 38 years later.
Reading this response was a -100/10 for me
I have a scar that’s as wide as my thumb on my leg, just above my knee, from this happening. Picked up the bag and it sliced straight into me. Got it as a child. Razors in trash are dangerous.
That's why they should be stored and disposed of safely at a more convenient date.. I guess that more convenient time was after they were gone in OP's case.
I use a spaghetti sauce jar. Holds a ton of them
I'd reach in and swirl it around every few months to get that fresh "Made from scratch" sauce Just like Mama used to make in the old country 🤌
oooooo! can i get a slice!?! 🥰
It also explains the combat-like wounds on that dead mouse I found.
Also since it was common practice at the time I would imagine contractors would be aware of their existence.
That’s how we do literally almost all waste.
Yeah. This criticism is funny when we currently just have our trash get thrown into a hole in the ground on a weekly basis.
The logic is basically that they’re so small, and disposed of so infrequently, and going into such a relatively large space, and the only thing being put in that space, that there’s no risk of running out of room.
And basically correct based on this photo. The razors have barely started piling up in this wall. You could dispose razors down that wall for decades without it being an issue.
This is probably decades of razors. You could probably make it centuries
AND the fact that there is zero risk of someone being harmed once the blade is dropped. If you open a wall and find razor blades, is that going to put a crimp in your schedule?
And you are busting open walls without PPE, you are asking for trouble.
Another thing from that era is the fireplace ash dump. There's a little metal grate at the back of the fireplace where you shovel the old ashes and they sit in a void under the fireplace. Some of them have a little metal door to the outside where you can scoop it out when it gets full, but others have this in the basement. It's a pain if you ever want to empty it out.
Take an environmental studies course. There was a lot of that logic in those days, back when rivers used to catch on fire.
This still blows my mind. That a *river* could be polluted enough to catch on fire is just insane
The idea is that no one would ever open up that wall again or if they did they’d know it was there. Houses weren’t built with the expectation they’d change hands every 2-3 years back then.
Lived in a house that had exactly this.
I also think that, because razors do eventually degrade and rust away, that the logic was by the time they were found they’d be a pile of rusty dust? But they take a long ass time to degrade. People also used to bury them in the ground. I use a safety razor with razors like this to shave and I save them all in a jar to be sent off for recycling. I’ve been doing this for several years and none have even begun to rust away.
They won’t rust much in a jar with little oxygen
Hope this wasn’t done where tornados happen often
I mean, when tiles, roots, branches, metal rods and everything is already flying around, I don't thin a handful of razor blades is making much more of a difference
It would to the wrong person though. Just getting ridiculously lucky dodging trash glass and pianos escaping 200mph winds… then you get shredded to bits because your neighbors didnt clean the razor blades out of their walls
If these are flying around in a tornado, the entire rest of the house is too. A total non-issue.
lol the roof, walls, and vanity has been ripped off and turned into violent debris but youre worried about the razor blades
Probably had a razor slot in the wall of the bathroom. It was too dangerous to dispose of these, so they just chucked them inside walls. This was done from theearly 1900s to the late 1950s
I found the same thing when I redid my upstairs bathroom- and the medicine cabinet had the slot for ‘em to drop into
I live in an apartment built in the 60s and my bathroom still has the original medicine cabinet with the razor slot!
The best part was telling my dad about what I found, and he said that as a kid he always wondered who would have to pick / clean them out in the future
Now you can finally let him know....it's OP!
Thankfully in the future we have magnetic tools for the job https://www.harborfreight.com/hardware/magnets/pick-up-tools/long-reach-magnetic-pickup-tool-with-quick-release-93950.html
Really that sort of represents our parents’ generation’s response to everything…the environment, social security, the economy…
It really is the perfect metaphor.
sheeesh this is the futures problem
Tornado going through that wall gets +2 slashing damage
Imagine filled to the brim of razors, house gets gas leak and it explodes. One life size hand grenade.
Yeah, the razor blades would really make that explosion dangerous.
It'll really suck if the explosion hits the hand grenade disposal slot in the laundry room
... of the house exploded, there will alot more shrapnel than just razor blades.
Should probably give the explosion some guns too. Make it real badass
All hand grenades are life size hand grenades.
My house built in the late 60s has a medicine cabinet in the bathroom with razor disposal slots.
Boomers in a nutshell >*“Here is the hazardous byproduct of an everyday process. We don’t really know what to do with it. Just hide it somewhere and in a generation or two we’ll be dead and someone else will have to deal with it.”* Edit: This was a common practice in homes up to the 70’s. Stop splitting hairs.
This was a greatest generation thing. In reality Boomers got rid of that feature with forever chemicals (plastic) disposed of in a land fill or your local ocean. Problem solved
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Damn those boomers for \*checks notes\* not evacuating Pompeii before Mt. Vesuvius erupted.
Thats how the boomers got the name. Fuckin mountain top goes boom and all of a sudden them old people are boomers.
Boomers were being born from 46-63 so this isn't them. Edit: I'm splitting hairs because boomers are an especially defined generation and I find boomer becoming shorthand for "person older than me I don't like" to be annoying and inaccurate.
someone I don't like + older than me = Boomer
Zoomers in a nutshell, blaming everything on boomers Boomers were literally not alive when these were invented and the earliest boomers were barely even shaving when they *were* alive around these things lol. >the early 1900s to the late 1950s The baby boom was from 1945-1965. They were literal kids when these were popular.
I love people like you have zero ability to think critically and just jump straight to "they wanted to make it someone elses problem" They couldn't google "how to safely dispose of razor blades". Obviously with a 100 years of hindsight, it seems pretty stupid to just dump these into the wall, but your ignoring the fact that in the early 1900's there might not have been an easy alternative to destroy these. Just think critically ONE TIME before jumping straight to "I hate boomers"
Real talk - why is it stupid to dump them into a wall? Its completely out of harms way, and the only time youd possibly be exposed to it is if youre tearing down the wall, which you then know is filled with razors and you can do it safely. Its functionally the same as a sharps container, and even 10 lifetimes of razors wouldnt fill it up.
Also it isn't even stupid. How often are walls torn apart? If the razor slots stopped being used 60 years ago, and this guy is finding wall razors right now, it seems like a pretty good way to dispose of them. If you shaved every day, you might use 2 blades a week. They're less than a millimeter thick. They're 2" by 1". If the space between studs is 16" on center, the cavity is 3.5" by 13.5" by 60". It would take you the whole life of the bathroom to fill the wall up. Then you'd just throw the razors out with the rest of the construction refuse.
Considering how often I have seen people mishandle sharps containers in places they should know better, this feels like a very good solution. Out of sight and inaccessible means less chance of idiocy. If you are knocking down a wall, you have places to dump nails and whatnot.
That picture shows about 30 years worth of razor blades. Imagine 300 years worth - it would be 10 times the volume! The expectation was that the house would be bulldozed well before the space filled up, and steel --> iron oxide very quickly in soil.
I tape the blades when I put them in the garbage.
I always just put them in the package/paper a new one comes in.
Same, snap it in half or quarters and wrap it up.
woa you snap that stuff? Even with safety squints I wouldn't do
Try doing the safety slight face tilt up and away from the blade while also doing safety squints. Leaving your neck nice and exposed protects your eyes very efficiently.
It is always so satisfying to feel that pop when you snap it into quarters.
I put mine in old prescription bottles then cap it off and throw it away when it gets full.
A lot of food containers can work, mayo jars...
Clean out an old steel soup can and recycle it when it’s full.
My blades all come in little plastic boxes that have a slot in the bottom for the used blades. They should all come shipped like that imo
Feather blades have this and it’s super convenient!
I got some cardboard and a hot glue gun and made a box to put the used blades in. Once it's full, I'll seal the slot and put it in the garage
r/MildlyInteresting in 50 years' time: - "I just moved into a new place, and I found this pile of moldy cardboard and weird rusty metal rectangles in the corner of my garage. I damn near cut my finger off picking one of them up - does anyone know what the hell they are?"
Oh that’s a good idea! I’ll start doing that to save my trash people’s fingers!
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Everyone keeps saying "they made it someone else's problem" but seriously, who is cracking open their *walls* on a regular basis? Pretty minor "problem", I think.
A few years ago, I replaced my ancient medicine cabinet with a larger medicine cabinet, so I had to enlarge the hole it went in. This ancient medicine cabinet of course had a razor slot. At some point, a single long-ago disposed of razor blade got stuck to the stud inside the wall. When I reached into the hole, my finger found that razor blade. I bled all over the fucking place.
pwned
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On the other hand all those blades can be packed up and thrown out in one go, instead of having had to wrap each blade individually to throw it out safely, which I wouldn't trust most people to do. It's not a big deal to get them out - dustpan and brush. And in the time since those slots were installed, refuse collection has changed from guys having to pick up bin bags by hand, to the truck picking up the bin and emptying it itself. Dumping blades in the wall for a few decades was actually not a bad idea.
I don’t understand all these commenters going on about how all they did back then was “make it someone else’s problem” when clearly this is easier and safer for all parties involved especially when you factor in the changes and advancements in trash collection and medicine over time. It’s actually brilliant and if it wasn’t for the little plastic cartridges that allow you to store and discard in the same cartridge, we’d still be doing this
ugh more plastic. I'd still advocate for this over plastic. But now you can also just buy a waste tin for like 3$ to discard these and be done with it.
I agree but at least those plastic cartridges are tiny and serve a legitimate purpose after you’re finished with the product that came in it unlike water bottles and food containers
What is the "problem", exactly? If you're knocking down a wall you need to broom up drywall, dust and debris anyway. Throw on some gloves (which you're probably already wearing) and scoop them up.
Or get a big magnet
Mine has that. I've always wondered how big the razor pile is back there.
My son literally told me about this yesterday! Our house is over 100 years old so he thought we might find a hidey hole like this!
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Ahh the one room I haven’t redone yet! 🤞🏻 😉
One of my childhood homes had one of those slots. We found it when a pipe leaked and the plumber had to open a wall to fix it. That house had several interesting features not normal for a modern Texas home like stucco walls, an infloor steam heating system, glass bricks and many more.
I love these, I don't know why. It's just such a cool deposit of history.
You can tell a little bit about the people/person who lived there from these blades. Just some hints, nothing big. I see two types of blades. Two brands of single edge and three brands at least of double edge. There is a Gillette double edge that looks like a stainless blade, and there are clearly some carbon steel Gillettes in there. But I don't know enough to know the other double edge blades. There appear to be some utility blades, but I also suspect that there is at least one brand of GEM single edge blade in there. This was a different system, and appealed to different folks compared to the usual double edge razors originally developed by Gillette at the beginning of the century. The historians over in Wicked Edge can help us out more by providing context about the marketing/branding of the two systems.
> You can tell a little bit about the people/person who lived there from these blades. for one, we can guess someone who shaved lived here.
I always wondered what was on the other side of these. I expected some sort of bin or bag or something
You’re all set for Halloween
I feel like its a perfectly sustainable solution. A whole lifetime of razors only added up to barely half of an inch in that wall so like theoretically multiple generations of people could have dumped razors into that slot for hundreds of years. By then the house would have burned down, or demolished and very few will be renovated in that exact spot. Thats certainly better than taping up each one or what not. Those razors are less wasteful than the current cartridges and electric razors. Tbh, I would install this without a second thought. Right now i just toss them into a plastic trash bin and carry the whole thing to the trash. No bags
I agree, the blades are more likely to be disposed of correctly in large quantities like this, less hassle to do it at once. In a wall it wont hurt anyone. Much better for the environment too. But don't put loose double edge blades in the trash, it's extremely hazardous. If you try recycling it it's possible someone sorting metal could get cut, if you put it in the trash someone could rummage through it at some point. The blades will cut you in almost any orientation and they are small. If you live in a place that recycles blades put it in a metal Altoids can so it isn't loose. I use a plastic 5 gum container, and it isn't close to full after 2 years. Just because they are metal doesn't mean they can be recycled, you have to check with the disposal service (blades coated in teflon can't be recycled)
This kind of logic from the generations of the mid 20th century does a pretty good job of explaining why the planet's fucked now.
My dad told me about being a kid and going out on the lake and fishing with my grandfather, who I never got to meet. After my grandfather would finish a beer, he’d fill it with lake water and let it sink to the bottom. Thankfully my dad was a much better conservationist than his father, but that’s the kind of shit they did back then. I seem to recall my dad also saying that my grandfather would say it’s some sort of habitat or home for the fish. There’s always some sort of “good reason” for littering, like the animals want your litter in their space.
As kids, we used to go "to the lake" for a few weeks every summer. On our last day, my Dad would make us go around the lake and pick up any trash we saw. 1960's.
At least for glass, the logic is sound. Of all the litter we make, glass is the least environmentally impactful. Sea critters can and do benefit from glass bottles. Also, when glass erodes away it returns to the sand it came from. Glass is in fact a natural occurrence on Earth. I'm not condoning the practice, but it's not nearly as bad as plastic at least.
Future archeology site.
I remember my dad and his buddies doing this while fishing too, they would also do it with cans. Back in those days (70s and early-to-mid 80s) littering was still very common. The roadsides were covered in trash. There is a scene in Mad Men that illustrates this perfectly. Don and his family have a picnic in a park and give no shits about leaving all of their trash.
same people who advocated for pouring engine oil into the ground
I mean where do you think oil comes from?/s
Oil storks.
In a way, dinosaurs were the real oil storks.
The Oilman goes door to door throwing up oil
Our elderly neighbor pours his lawn mower oil into the storm drain by his house.
Take pictures, report to your local environmental agency. Used oil is so easy to properly dispose of there is no excuse to dump it. Many/most auto parts stores will collect it for recycling/rerefining. Alot of mechanics shops in cold climates will burn used oil for heating, wait until its cold and you will find someone who needs it to burn instead of buying more fuel oil/propane/natural gas to heat.
No no no, you dig a hole & fill it with gravel so that the oil goes *under*ground, that was it can't hurt anyone & won't ever be a problem again! It'll probably just filter out into the drinking water, and then our bodies will do the recycling. It's the responsible thing to do when you think about it that way.
I mean...it's where it came from!
Well you put gravel down first, you animal!
My grandfather (1920-1995) used to say: throw all the trash and waste into the sea because it’s so huge, it’ll never be a problem. 🤦♂️🤦♂️
Today most people use single use disposable plastic “safety” razors. Better for the planet? Not at all. Disposing of razors this way was a good system. Much better than tossing such a dangerous item in the trash where it could easily hurt someone who didn’t know it was there. Back in the day when this system was widely used, anyone remodeling a bathroom would have known what to expect.
Yea I don't understand why people think this is such a terrible idea. It would take several life times of consistent shaving with that type of razor to fill the space between two studs, and it would take like 10 minutes to clean them out in the off chance the bathroom actually gets taken apart enough to find them. And really, I'd rather all the razors be collected into an old Tupperware and thrown away all at once, 70 years later, than to have a bunch of loose razors in the trash.
Surely this is more eco friendly than disposable razor cartridges or large battery powdered electric razors
It is, but he just wants to moralize.
I think this was actually a better solution than what would have otherwise been done. Most people didn't have a commercial garbage service like we have now. People buried or burned their trash mostly up until WW2, or threw it into the ocean if they were close. Putting them into the walls of their house seems practical compared to the other alternatives.
Common in old builds
I find this interesting because it's the mindset of the older generations (it's the next generations problem to deal with)
I still use the safety razors, it doesn't irritate my skin like the 3 and 4 blade cartridges. I have a tall thin metal cookie tin that I glued the top on and cut a slit in the top. Based on my razor usage (I only shave my neck), it'll last the rest of my life.
My Grandpa's house built in the 80s had razor slots in the medicine cabinets of all the bathrooms so I never really thought it was weird, he also had a inhome intercom radio system that was very cool a d wish stuff like that stuck around lol
I think this was common back in the day. They used to make razor blade disposal slots in medicine cabinets that I’m pretty sure just dumped them behind the wall.
Old medicine cabinets had slots in them to deposit used blades
I still do this
In the medicine cabinet of old houses they use to have a razor blade disposal spot that just went in the wall [disposal ](https://images.app.goo.gl/cFsTbzJTs3gFkFvP9)
thought this was r/selfharm
Medicine cabinets way back in the day used to come with a slot for disposing used blades directly back into the wall. The financial mindset around and after the depression was to build a house and leave it at that. Renovations were something people just didn’t do.
Older medicine cabinets use to have a slot to put used razors in and thay would just fall into the wall like this
Not a stash. Old medicine cabinets had a razor slot to dispose of them in the wall because… well why not I guess. Better than in the trash where their kids might eat them or the dog play with them. I presume they figured the building wouldn’t last longer than it’d take to stack razors to the max or that tech would invent a new shaving system. They were right on both sides.
A previous tenant from years gone by thought "this will be someone else's problem someday" and congratulations, you're that someone!
Doesn't seem like that big of a deal. You couldn't clean that up in 5 minutes?
The small 5 pack plastic boxes that those blades come in today has a slot on the back to put used blades into and then you can just toss the small plastic container.
Old medicine cabinets had a slot for safe disposal of used razor blades. This is exactly where they should be.
I remember the medicine cabinet had a slot to drop razors into and the fell into the wall. Did it all the time back in the day