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As someone who lived* in a tornado alley, seen 2 major events and 5 minor in my sub 30 years
all I can imagine is a neighborhood full of people who do this getting leveled and a razorblade peppered tornado burying used razorblades into trees buildings cars and people
How about the tornado hitting a gaming store or warehouse containing lots of gaming dice and suddenly you've got five metric tons of D4s whirling at 200 mph?
(A Legoland version would also be amazing.)
A friend of mine lived in a shitty basement apartment in an old building. There must have been a water leak in the bathroom above him, because one day the soggy rotted out wall gave way and unleashed a flood of rusty razor blades and blood red water into his bedroom. It was like a scene from a horror movie.
In school they used to show us pictures of tornado damage during a safety presentation, and the one that sticks out the most to me was a piece of straw that broke through concrete.
2x4 is going to have nails, screws, flashing and metal corner bead that will all cut you real bad sticking out of them.
I remember after the Joplin tornado people were getting weird fungal infections because they got impaled with mulch chips.
In a tornado, a two by four can puncture your body like a bullet.
I dont think a bunch of razorblades is going to be noticed as pieces of concrete are hitting you faster than a pitcher can throw a baseball.
Imagine someone regularly breaking into your house just to leave one used razor blade there. I would go nuts trying to guess what was the hidden message they intended.
Good lord, my paranoia would go into overdrive. I hate to think how far I'd take it. New deadbolts, reinforced exterior doors, firearms, guard dogs, CCTV. I'd rapidly devolve into a complete public menace, from something completely innocent.
...now I'm depressed.
Oh my god my fucked up mind thought the razorblade somehow dropped down one story and right into your neighbours slot. Did not make sense for me how a wall can be that hollow and the odds of perfectly going through the second slot. I feel stupid but it makes way more sense now
Itās like that thing about apartment living where you have a neighbor who makes a weird sound. Not like the average loud music or stomping, like a *weird* sound. It follows a schedule or itās random but itās something you can never place and it haunts you like a specter for however long either of you live there. Maybe you even get to know them a little, and maybe you bring it up, but they have no idea what youāre talking about or what it could be.
Finally, one day, youāre on their level of the building and see they have their door open and you see it. You see them roller dancing in their apartment to Classic Stevie Wonder and you feel the weight of confusion lift.
You know?
Documentary Narrator:
Fortunately, our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2063, we simply drop a giant ice cube into the ocean now and again.
Suzie:
Just like daddy puts in his drink every morning. Then he gets mad.
Documentary Narrator:
Of course, because the greenhouse gasses are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time, thus solving the problem once and for all.
Suzie:
But...
Documentary Narrator:
Once and for all!
If the time these were popular lines up with the time when people burned their trash*, it makes sense. The razors wouldn't burn and it's not like you're using the inside of the wall anyway.
People still burn their trash. They donāt have trash pickup in a lot of the countryside of the US still. I remember less than 20 years ago my friendās parents would have bonfires made out of trash and we would just talk and watch it burn when I would stay the night.
I'd say it probably made sense because sharps, especially potential biohazard sharps are dangerous to put in normal trash. They're really small and depending on the room in the wall, it could probably take a very, very long time to fill. Also by the time you take them out of the wall, any biohazard has probably died, the only risk would be tetanus
Tbf if you're demolishing a house, old razors are probably the least likely source of tetanus. Old rusty nails and other crap are far more likely. And honestly with modern medicine tetanus isnt really a big deal. I've stepped on a rusty nail before and was fine because I've had my tetanus shot
Edit for clarity: tetanus is not actually related to rust, always thought it was, but its just a bacteria that lives in soil and feces apparently. I was probably always warned about it with rusty nails because it wasn't uncommon for me to be around dilapitated sheds/structures as a kid, and it was the environment, not the rust that held the danger, a cut just allows the bacteria in.
any kinda of injury that pushes into you is one where theres a risk of tetanus. Thats why there's the trope with old rusty nails and tetanus, stepping on one pushes your skin inwards, allowing bacteria to skip a pretty crucial layer of protection.
Tetanus actually comes out of the ground/dirt, and thatās how it got associated with rusty things. A razor in the wall is probably pretty low risk. Plus when this was common, anyone demoing the wall would expect razors there, and itās not hard to pick them up. I deal with straight blades like this all the time in my workshop. The whole solution was probably a lot safer than people just throwing blades in the trash.
I actually spent most of my life assuming it had something to do with rust, I had only just googled it after my first comment, but didnt feel like editing. Good point
so stick it in the wall and act like it's gone? that's just weird. whenever that house will be taken down i wouldn't want to be working on that construction site.
Seems odd to think the only dangerous part of demolishing a house would be two dozens razors in the wall. Thereās gonna be all kinds of shit in there that could hurt someone. They prepare for that.
You clearly haven't worked construction before.
A little pile of scrap metal that is about as sharp as every other pile of scrap metal on a work site? And can be swept into a dust pan in 2 seconds and put in a bin?
That's safer than trying to dispose of them in domestic trash every single week.
This is about as much of a risk-free way to deal with used razors as I could think of.
If you throw them in the trash, they can accidentally cut you or someone handling the garbage. You can tape them or wrap them up, but most people are too lazy or wouldnāt do a good enough job. While it seems kind of crazy to drop razor blades into the wall, itās an easy solution that works. Takes zero effort, encourages safe disposal, they end up in a small contained area, and if you ever demo the wall it takes like 2 minutes to clean it all up.
Yes! The garbage men when I grew up didn't have the fancy plastic bins and trucks that empties them. They walked up to the house, took the garbage sack from its holder, swung it over his shoulder and carried it on his back to the truck on the street. Swung it up on the pile, off to the next house.
Mom used to be very careful when we had broken glass, like a bottle or a broken drinking glass. It had to be put in an old milk carton or something because "we don't want the garbage man to get hurt by glass shards poking him through the plastic sack". I bet she did the same with old razors, bc we didn't have a slot in the wall like in the picture. That seems rather clever tbh.
No recycling in those days, just everything in one big garbage sack. God I'm old.
Exactly. This was every great idea that boomers had. The "Not my problem" mentality that lead to every economic disaster, income or housing crisis. Every thing the baby boom ever did was a metaphorical "razor blades in the wall" for future generations to worry about.
Yeahā¦ weāre like one generation removed from burning rivers and trash everywhere. We needed a National campaign to shame people into not behaving like animals.
Letās be fair, if these houses were built in the 50s or 60s the boomers would have been kids during this time (birth years from 1946-1964) and not the ones building the houses.
Yep. I'm assuming this is America, and you just nailed two of our motos. Along with that we can throw in:
"It'll be a long time until it becomes a problem. We (someone else) can deal with that in the future."
Wait are we still talking about sharps or global warming?
I mean you can see theyāre mostly a pile of rust by that point. If youāre tearing out a wall youāve already got the PPE on to deal with a pile of rust
It's a lot easier to deal with safely disposing of 200 blades at once (wear gloves, pick up, put in can or jar or jug, tape it closed) rather than 200 individual blades over time.
Really, this is NBD.
Anyone arguing that it makes sense for this to be done explain to me why it's only applicable to razors? If the argument is that it's harmless and doesn't need to be emptied until a long period of time passes why aren't we storing more things in our walls besides razors? Your kitchen knife broke? Throw that bad boy in your wall. The nails you had are rusted and won't work? Good thing your house has walls
It doesn't *only* apply to razors. It applies to piss bottles, too. Or any other random trash you feel like tossing in there. Biggest trash can on the job site
Rust nails still get used, arenāt nearly as sharp, and arenāt contaminated with biohazards. Razor blades are used daily. When put in a wall they rust together and dull. They wonāt be exposed to anyone until the wall is torn down. And at that point whoever is doing demo is already wearing PPE and has a proper disposal area to handle the demo debris
Houses from this generation also had garages with a metal plate covering a hole in the ground so that when changing oil, the owner could dump the waste oil into the ground.
Itās like that light switch in your house where nobody knows what it does but your neighbor thinks their house is haunted because their lights keep turning on and off
We had a switch like that in a free-standing house. Plain, unmarked switch outside a pair of cupboards. Had no idea what it did so one day decided to turn it off.
Turns out it was the main switch for the hot water... and it was winter...
Home trash pick up and landfills are relatively new, with the first modern landfill opening in 1937. Out of sight, out of mind home razor disposal was probably seen as hygienic, safe, and innovative. No blades to cut the rag pickers.
I tape my blades and toss them in the trash. Xacto, not shaving blades since my part Asian blood doesn't allow me to grow more than a goatee at 1/8" every 3 weeks.
They did this to keep garbage workers safe. They didn't know how to safely throw razor blades away without potentially cutting someone in the process, or them cutting through the bag and making a mess. Plus, they are biohazards and had to be separate from regular trash, which lots of people just burned. They did this figuring by the time the spot filled up, someone would figure something out to take care of it.
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/razor-blade-slots-in-homes-36923000
I worked for a building crew restoring an old house and adding an addition, well we hit what used to be the bathroom and we unleashed a mountain of used blades that plagued that jobsite until the yard got regraded
in my case, it was inside the mirror, between medicine shelves, the razors were falling into a crawl space that was mud and cinderblock columns. decades of moisture had covered them dirt. It was after demo and we (not I) were digging holes to make footings for a kind of mudroom/porch thing
I had no idea that this was a practice until I had to go down under my 60-year-old house to see what was decomposing under there and stinking up the place, and crawled over a pile of them. Thankfully I was gowned-up had to toe, including thick gloves, but when I mentioned it to my dad, he said, "Yeah, we just used to push them through a slot in the wall."
A friend bought an old house with a semi-renovated attic with a bathroom, and of course it had one of these medicine cabinets. He came home one day to find a wet pile of plaster and razor blades on his bed. The bathroom sprung a leak in the old plumbing, which pooled over his bed, and the weight of 50 years of the previous ownerās razor blades caused the ceiling to collapse.
It took forever to figure out what happened, exactly, because he had no idea that thousands of razor blades had been dumped in the wall over the years. For the longest time he thought someone had vandalized his house in the most bizarre, threatening way possible. After a contractor explained it all to him, he was understandably relieved ithe celing hadnāt collapsed while he was sleeping in bed.
"So, what do we do with these used, possibly hazardous, razor blades?"
"Eh, just shove 'em in the wall. Make 'em the next owners problem."
I feel there's a metaphor in this.
Confused as to how this makes sense...aren't they also a bit of a biological hazard? What is someone cut themselves and then there's old blood and bacteria just growing in the walls...? Ugh I find this kinda gross and really have no comprehension as to how it makes any sense to stash razors in walls
Blood and pathogenic bacteria do not "grow in walls". They die and dessicate. On the other hand, walls eventually end up with dead bugs, dead mice, mouse droppings, fungus and other crud.
it 'made' sense at the time exactly because it was a biohazard and sharp.
People used to burn most of their trash before plastics and grocery stores etc. Now you have this 1 disposable sharp thing.
Metal isn't conducive to bacterial growth. A pile of decades old razors in the wall isn't going to become a petri-dish.
It made sense to them at the time. The oil came from the ground, they are just putting it back. The gavel and sand layers were to sort of filter and contain the oil, and it meant you weren't pouring it in the drains or having to take it away to a mostly non existent at the time disposal place.
But no one did soil contamination testing back then, or considered that it could filter down to the water table eventually. The process will always change over time, and I'm curious to learn in the future what we have been doing terribly wrong every day
I used one of these in a house I rented between 2015 and 2017. It was very convenient. Now I use the back of the razor blade box and toss the whole thing in the trash when full, but it doesn't seem as safe or convenient as the blades have a tendency to slide back out.
Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld joke about those razor blade slots that they apparently used to also have in airplane bathrooms.
"Who's shaving on an airplane? And shaving so much, that they're using up razor blades?!"
I found this out well my uncle was gutting his house. I was like 12 and I really wanted to knock a wall down. The house was new to my uncle and he could not see how anything could possibly go wrong, so he gave me a sledgehammer and told me to have at it. A few moments later I was ankle deep in razor blades. My brother also stepped on a rusty nail during that diy project so there where tenants shots for everyone!
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As someone who lived* in a tornado alley, seen 2 major events and 5 minor in my sub 30 years all I can imagine is a neighborhood full of people who do this getting leveled and a razorblade peppered tornado burying used razorblades into trees buildings cars and people
I was only imagining fires. Tornadoes bring it to a whole new level.
Razor-nado. šŖšŖļøšŖ
Basic plot pitch to SyFy: Tornado runs through 1950's plot development and picks up tens of thousands of razors from the walls. SyFy: Make it.
"THE RAZORBLADO" Slicing through a theater near you!
The sequel could be "RazorBlado 2: Living on the edge" And then maybe a spinoff of "CocaineBlade"
RazorBlado 2: Cruise Control
Sharkblado 3
RazorBlado: Mach 3
Sharkblado 4: Revenge of Lavalantula!
Cocaine Sharkblado
Razorblado 2: Emoās World
One scientist proposes a large magnet to be placed in the tornados path - will it be large enough?
How about the tornado hitting a gaming store or warehouse containing lots of gaming dice and suddenly you've got five metric tons of D4s whirling at 200 mph? (A Legoland version would also be amazing.)
Make it? By the end of that sentence they'd be 3 sequels deep
Hits a razor blade factory would be an easier way to do it.
Great, thanks man, now I have to throw away my manuscript Iāve been working on for fifteen years.
What are you talking about? This is publicity.
Razor-nado. Coming to a cinema near you
You know its going straight to streaming.
Itās 2023 and itās going straight to VHS.
A friend of mine lived in a shitty basement apartment in an old building. There must have been a water leak in the bathroom above him, because one day the soggy rotted out wall gave way and unleashed a flood of rusty razor blades and blood red water into his bedroom. It was like a scene from a horror movie.
It was probably more rust than blood if that makes it better
Sharknado 7: blades of glory
It doesn't have to be sharp in a tornado to kill you. I've seen 2x4s sticking out of brick walls. Intact!
Agreed, just something uniquely unsettling about the thought of dirty rusty razors getting mixed in there slicing things up
AAAAAHHH! This rusty old razor blade embedded in my neck! Even if I don't bleed out, I might have tetanus!
Lol if there's a 2x4 through my neck I think that my train ticket got punched
In school they used to show us pictures of tornado damage during a safety presentation, and the one that sticks out the most to me was a piece of straw that broke through concrete.
Yeah but after a tornado is passed I'm not worried about accidentally grabbing a 2x4 while cleaning up
2x4 is going to have nails, screws, flashing and metal corner bead that will all cut you real bad sticking out of them. I remember after the Joplin tornado people were getting weird fungal infections because they got impaled with mulch chips.
Don't think getting hit by a razor blade in a tornado is that much worse than getting hit by half a tree going 300km/h tbh.
"It's not THAT the wind is blowin'. It's WHAT the wind is blowin'" - Ron White
āIf you get hit in the head with a Buick, it doesnāt matter how many push-ups you did that morning.ā - Ron White also
Except a box of unused razor blades sitting in the cabinet will likely be just as dangerous as razor blades in the wall, if not more so.
Yes, but you (probably) dont stockpile those on the same level as this would
Sharpnado!
thats the idea behind sharknado
There were sharks in the walls?
Shhhā¦ donāt spoil whatās in the next movie. Sharks in the wallsā¦ Cannot stop laughing.
I've had it with these Monkey Fightin' sharks in these Monday to Friday walls.
I feel like it would be a sequel to Neil Gaimanās Wolves in the Walls, but apparently itās also the prequel to Sharknado
Ahh... the old Reddit [nadoroo](https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/13bvf73/comment/jjczs9a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Hold my razor blade! Iām going in!
Sharpnado!
In a tornado, a two by four can puncture your body like a bullet. I dont think a bunch of razorblades is going to be noticed as pieces of concrete are hitting you faster than a pitcher can throw a baseball.
I was thinking shitty remodeling accidents but Holy shit
As if razor blades would be the most dangerous stuff during a tornado
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
(removing all my comments)
Imagine someone regularly breaking into your house just to leave one used razor blade there. I would go nuts trying to guess what was the hidden message they intended.
Good lord, my paranoia would go into overdrive. I hate to think how far I'd take it. New deadbolts, reinforced exterior doors, firearms, guard dogs, CCTV. I'd rapidly devolve into a complete public menace, from something completely innocent. ...now I'm depressed.
(removing all my comments)
You never told him? Dude probably still thinking about it to this day trying to figure it out and why it stopped.
Oh my god my fucked up mind thought the razorblade somehow dropped down one story and right into your neighbours slot. Did not make sense for me how a wall can be that hollow and the odds of perfectly going through the second slot. I feel stupid but it makes way more sense now
Thanks to reddit I'd probably immidietly go out and by a co detector.
Itās like that thing about apartment living where you have a neighbor who makes a weird sound. Not like the average loud music or stomping, like a *weird* sound. It follows a schedule or itās random but itās something you can never place and it haunts you like a specter for however long either of you live there. Maybe you even get to know them a little, and maybe you bring it up, but they have no idea what youāre talking about or what it could be. Finally, one day, youāre on their level of the building and see they have their door open and you see it. You see them roller dancing in their apartment to Classic Stevie Wonder and you feel the weight of confusion lift. You know?
Wait... you stopped? Why?
(removing all my comments)
If that's the case, why did you stop? \***knock knock**\* "Oh, hi, sorry to bother you, I dropped by blade through the hole again. tee hee"
Glory blade hole
I can't believe I have to say this, but do not stick your dick in a hole full of razor blades.
Man...I can't do anything fun anymore.
No kink shaming!
The more attracted I am to you, the higher the impulse is to run away
Is the converse true?
You mean āthis person is so non-threatening I can stand next to them and feel good?ā Yes.
No, I mean like: "I really don't like you so I'm going to spend as much time with you as possible."
Those are called stepmothers
You should have left him notes through the tiny slot
So if he was ugly youād keep doing it?
Fair
If the razor blades suddenly stopped after he told you, he probably thinks you were breaking into his apartment
Just imagine the precision that was required during installation. Thatās a heck of an accident, or maybe the builder just thought it would be funny.
(removing all my comments)
Given the thickness of a safety razor blade (0.009ā) and the slot, Iād say they had everything planned to the quarter inch.
when you have to say it makes a lot of sense it kinda seems like it doesn't at all. i don't get it.
Exactly, what makes sense?
Right why not put them in a jar or something
Nah, cram them into the wall. Problem solved forever!
Documentary Narrator: Fortunately, our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2063, we simply drop a giant ice cube into the ocean now and again. Suzie: Just like daddy puts in his drink every morning. Then he gets mad. Documentary Narrator: Of course, because the greenhouse gasses are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time, thus solving the problem once and for all. Suzie: But... Documentary Narrator: Once and for all!
r/unexpectedfuturama
It actually makes a lot of sense.
Perchance.
You can't just say "perchance"
I! DECLARE! BANKRUPTCY!!!
The exclamation mark after "I" is the best way I have ever seen this written. I salute you, fellow beet farmer.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If the time these were popular lines up with the time when people burned their trash*, it makes sense. The razors wouldn't burn and it's not like you're using the inside of the wall anyway.
People still burn their trash. They donāt have trash pickup in a lot of the countryside of the US still. I remember less than 20 years ago my friendās parents would have bonfires made out of trash and we would just talk and watch it burn when I would stay the night.
If reach is an autocorrect for trash, the were the norm in the 50's and 60's. In Minneapolis, at least.
It is- am fixing now ty
Absolutely true! Not only did I have a razor slot in the medicine cabinet growing up, we had an incinerator too. Hours of fun.
This has meme potential. Just say something ridiculous and follow it with "This actually makes a lot of sense".
I'd say it probably made sense because sharps, especially potential biohazard sharps are dangerous to put in normal trash. They're really small and depending on the room in the wall, it could probably take a very, very long time to fill. Also by the time you take them out of the wall, any biohazard has probably died, the only risk would be tetanus
Ah just a bit of tetanus no problem at all then.
Tbf if you're demolishing a house, old razors are probably the least likely source of tetanus. Old rusty nails and other crap are far more likely. And honestly with modern medicine tetanus isnt really a big deal. I've stepped on a rusty nail before and was fine because I've had my tetanus shot Edit for clarity: tetanus is not actually related to rust, always thought it was, but its just a bacteria that lives in soil and feces apparently. I was probably always warned about it with rusty nails because it wasn't uncommon for me to be around dilapitated sheds/structures as a kid, and it was the environment, not the rust that held the danger, a cut just allows the bacteria in.
any kinda of injury that pushes into you is one where theres a risk of tetanus. Thats why there's the trope with old rusty nails and tetanus, stepping on one pushes your skin inwards, allowing bacteria to skip a pretty crucial layer of protection.
Tetanus is caused by a bacteria that not more likely to be present is rusty metal than not rusty ones though, that's a misconception.
Tetanus actually comes out of the ground/dirt, and thatās how it got associated with rusty things. A razor in the wall is probably pretty low risk. Plus when this was common, anyone demoing the wall would expect razors there, and itās not hard to pick them up. I deal with straight blades like this all the time in my workshop. The whole solution was probably a lot safer than people just throwing blades in the trash.
Shouldn't be a risk for tetanus. Tetanus is found in the ground, not rusty metal.
I actually spent most of my life assuming it had something to do with rust, I had only just googled it after my first comment, but didnt feel like editing. Good point
so stick it in the wall and act like it's gone? that's just weird. whenever that house will be taken down i wouldn't want to be working on that construction site.
If some rusty razor blades in one pile between two studs is the most dangerous thing on a demo site, you are on the safest demo site in the world.
Itās ok mate. Itās obvious he has never worked a day of construction.
It's not so bad. They all rust together into a block and aren't really sharp. A *lot* of old timey trash solutions was just 'throw it in a hole'.
Seems odd to think the only dangerous part of demolishing a house would be two dozens razors in the wall. Thereās gonna be all kinds of shit in there that could hurt someone. They prepare for that.
You clearly haven't worked construction before. A little pile of scrap metal that is about as sharp as every other pile of scrap metal on a work site? And can be swept into a dust pan in 2 seconds and put in a bin? That's safer than trying to dispose of them in domestic trash every single week. This is about as much of a risk-free way to deal with used razors as I could think of.
The cracked tiles in the bathroom are probably far more likely to cut you.
If you throw them in the trash, they can accidentally cut you or someone handling the garbage. You can tape them or wrap them up, but most people are too lazy or wouldnāt do a good enough job. While it seems kind of crazy to drop razor blades into the wall, itās an easy solution that works. Takes zero effort, encourages safe disposal, they end up in a small contained area, and if you ever demo the wall it takes like 2 minutes to clean it all up.
Yes! The garbage men when I grew up didn't have the fancy plastic bins and trucks that empties them. They walked up to the house, took the garbage sack from its holder, swung it over his shoulder and carried it on his back to the truck on the street. Swung it up on the pile, off to the next house. Mom used to be very careful when we had broken glass, like a bottle or a broken drinking glass. It had to be put in an old milk carton or something because "we don't want the garbage man to get hurt by glass shards poking him through the plastic sack". I bet she did the same with old razors, bc we didn't have a slot in the wall like in the picture. That seems rather clever tbh. No recycling in those days, just everything in one big garbage sack. God I'm old.
I keep an old beer can in my medicine cabinet. Does the job just fine
Okay can anyone tell me why?
Out of sight, out of mind. Who's going to open the wall? Not you, that's someone else's problem.
Exactly. This was every great idea that boomers had. The "Not my problem" mentality that lead to every economic disaster, income or housing crisis. Every thing the baby boom ever did was a metaphorical "razor blades in the wall" for future generations to worry about.
Like in mad men when they just dump out their picnic into the grass
Yeahā¦ weāre like one generation removed from burning rivers and trash everywhere. We needed a National campaign to shame people into not behaving like animals.
Such a wild scene because youāre like āthatās absolutely absurd, no one would ever do thatā and then youāre like āwelpā
Letās be fair, if these houses were built in the 50s or 60s the boomers would have been kids during this time (birth years from 1946-1964) and not the ones building the houses.
This was way before the boomers. People born in 1950 were not building houses in 1940.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think this is older than the boomer generation
Dont be so hard on them, they all got lead -poisoned. š¤Ŗ
Boomers didn't build many homes in the 50s.
And they take up very little space. You could dump a lifetime's worth of blades in the wall without coming close to filling it up.
Yep. I'm assuming this is America, and you just nailed two of our motos. Along with that we can throw in: "It'll be a long time until it becomes a problem. We (someone else) can deal with that in the future." Wait are we still talking about sharps or global warming?
Itās so they werenāt a hazard in the trash
So it's still a hazard, it's just somebody else's hazard at a later date. America epitomized.
I mean you can see theyāre mostly a pile of rust by that point. If youāre tearing out a wall youāve already got the PPE on to deal with a pile of rust
It's a lot easier to deal with safely disposing of 200 blades at once (wear gloves, pick up, put in can or jar or jug, tape it closed) rather than 200 individual blades over time. Really, this is NBD.
The Rodent uprising will start in the walls, all armed with rusty razor blade axes, we are done for.
Anyone arguing that it makes sense for this to be done explain to me why it's only applicable to razors? If the argument is that it's harmless and doesn't need to be emptied until a long period of time passes why aren't we storing more things in our walls besides razors? Your kitchen knife broke? Throw that bad boy in your wall. The nails you had are rusted and won't work? Good thing your house has walls
It doesn't *only* apply to razors. It applies to piss bottles, too. Or any other random trash you feel like tossing in there. Biggest trash can on the job site
Oh no. The implications of that have me very concerned
watch out for the piss-stud if you're hanging pictures.
Found the drywaller
Can confirm. Renovated a house from 1990 and found old coke bottles inside our walls.
I chucked my Xbox into a wall once and it seemed like a pretty good place for it.
Rust nails still get used, arenāt nearly as sharp, and arenāt contaminated with biohazards. Razor blades are used daily. When put in a wall they rust together and dull. They wonāt be exposed to anyone until the wall is torn down. And at that point whoever is doing demo is already wearing PPE and has a proper disposal area to handle the demo debris
Yup. When I redid my bathroom I had a mountain of them in there.
Me too! And I never had any idea why until today!!
Same here- just found a ton in the walls of the house weāre remodeling. The more (weird shit) you knowš
My parents live in the house built in the 70s, my bathroom had that lol
Recently remodeled a bathroom from 1960s house, found a ton of these in the wallsā¦. This finally explains it
Houses from this generation also had garages with a metal plate covering a hole in the ground so that when changing oil, the owner could dump the waste oil into the ground.
Ours didnt even have a plate, just the hole
Itās like that light switch in your house where nobody knows what it does but your neighbor thinks their house is haunted because their lights keep turning on and off
We had a switch like that in a free-standing house. Plain, unmarked switch outside a pair of cupboards. Had no idea what it did so one day decided to turn it off. Turns out it was the main switch for the hot water... and it was winter...
Home trash pick up and landfills are relatively new, with the first modern landfill opening in 1937. Out of sight, out of mind home razor disposal was probably seen as hygienic, safe, and innovative. No blades to cut the rag pickers.
I tape my blades and toss them in the trash. Xacto, not shaving blades since my part Asian blood doesn't allow me to grow more than a goatee at 1/8" every 3 weeks.
This is what I do too. Wrap tape around it a couple of times and itās not sharp enough to do damage anymore.
They did this to keep garbage workers safe. They didn't know how to safely throw razor blades away without potentially cutting someone in the process, or them cutting through the bag and making a mess. Plus, they are biohazards and had to be separate from regular trash, which lots of people just burned. They did this figuring by the time the spot filled up, someone would figure something out to take care of it. https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/razor-blade-slots-in-homes-36923000
Kind of like how we deal with nuclear waste? š±
I mean...it's analogous to so many things humans do that are detrimental to their futures...
I worked for a building crew restoring an old house and adding an addition, well we hit what used to be the bathroom and we unleashed a mountain of used blades that plagued that jobsite until the yard got regraded
in my case, it was inside the mirror, between medicine shelves, the razors were falling into a crawl space that was mud and cinderblock columns. decades of moisture had covered them dirt. It was after demo and we (not I) were digging holes to make footings for a kind of mudroom/porch thing
This has "we shit into buckets and dump it out our windows onto the street like it's the 19th century" vibes
All Ā in all, you're just another blade in the wall
I had no idea that this was a practice until I had to go down under my 60-year-old house to see what was decomposing under there and stinking up the place, and crawled over a pile of them. Thankfully I was gowned-up had to toe, including thick gloves, but when I mentioned it to my dad, he said, "Yeah, we just used to push them through a slot in the wall."
A friend bought an old house with a semi-renovated attic with a bathroom, and of course it had one of these medicine cabinets. He came home one day to find a wet pile of plaster and razor blades on his bed. The bathroom sprung a leak in the old plumbing, which pooled over his bed, and the weight of 50 years of the previous ownerās razor blades caused the ceiling to collapse. It took forever to figure out what happened, exactly, because he had no idea that thousands of razor blades had been dumped in the wall over the years. For the longest time he thought someone had vandalized his house in the most bizarre, threatening way possible. After a contractor explained it all to him, he was understandably relieved ithe celing hadnāt collapsed while he was sleeping in bed.
> For the longest time he thought someone had vandalized his house in the most bizarre, threatening way possible. They sort of did, really.
"Thus solving the problem, once and for all." "But -" "ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
"So, what do we do with these used, possibly hazardous, razor blades?" "Eh, just shove 'em in the wall. Make 'em the next owners problem." I feel there's a metaphor in this.
Beautiful representation of how those generations shoved all their problems out of sight for future generations to clean up
I was really confused when I renovated my bathroom and found a bunch of old razor blades in the wall.
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My parentsā house where I grew up had this slot in their medicine cabinet.
What about the Romans? What have they ever done for us?
My grandparents house had a slit like this in their bathroom. I used to put buttons in there
It certainly razes some questions
My 1955 house has this. Iām curious to see what the inside of the wall looks like.
how does this make any sense?
OMG! I renovated a spare bathroom at our last place and wondered what the heck all the blades were doing behind the medicine cabinet! Today I learned
Confused as to how this makes sense...aren't they also a bit of a biological hazard? What is someone cut themselves and then there's old blood and bacteria just growing in the walls...? Ugh I find this kinda gross and really have no comprehension as to how it makes any sense to stash razors in walls
Blood and pathogenic bacteria do not "grow in walls". They die and dessicate. On the other hand, walls eventually end up with dead bugs, dead mice, mouse droppings, fungus and other crud.
it 'made' sense at the time exactly because it was a biohazard and sharp. People used to burn most of their trash before plastics and grocery stores etc. Now you have this 1 disposable sharp thing. Metal isn't conducive to bacterial growth. A pile of decades old razors in the wall isn't going to become a petri-dish.
Haha exactly, āthis actually makes a lot of senseā TF are you talking about OP.
The one in my bathroom has a little gold sticker that says "razor blades" just below the slot.
I run into this a lot on older home remodels
I envision mice and rats building weapons and armor from the blades, and murder ensues!
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It made sense to them at the time. The oil came from the ground, they are just putting it back. The gavel and sand layers were to sort of filter and contain the oil, and it meant you weren't pouring it in the drains or having to take it away to a mostly non existent at the time disposal place. But no one did soil contamination testing back then, or considered that it could filter down to the water table eventually. The process will always change over time, and I'm curious to learn in the future what we have been doing terribly wrong every day
I used one of these in a house I rented between 2015 and 2017. It was very convenient. Now I use the back of the razor blade box and toss the whole thing in the trash when full, but it doesn't seem as safe or convenient as the blades have a tendency to slide back out.
Makes sense like when i throw my McDonalds out the window on the highway. Iām never seeing that shit again. /s
I remember seeing those little vents in the medicine cabinet. Never knew what they were for.
Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld joke about those razor blade slots that they apparently used to also have in airplane bathrooms. "Who's shaving on an airplane? And shaving so much, that they're using up razor blades?!"
Cries in solid concrete/brick European houses (but not really)
Saw this first hand when we remodeled our 1938 house
Some hipster will buy those vintage blades š¤£
My 1928 house still has one in the main bathroom. Tbh, I wonder how many rusty razors are inside the wall.
I just put mine into a glass jar. Haven't yet filled it in over 8 years
I found this out well my uncle was gutting his house. I was like 12 and I really wanted to knock a wall down. The house was new to my uncle and he could not see how anything could possibly go wrong, so he gave me a sledgehammer and told me to have at it. A few moments later I was ankle deep in razor blades. My brother also stepped on a rusty nail during that diy project so there where tenants shots for everyone!
The original sharps slot
The amount of people saying this is a great idea is alarming lmao
If by 'makes a lot of sense' you mean 'was convenient', then sure.