A small blade safe can hold hundreds of blades and it's like 4"x3"x3". Makes sense they thought the inside of drywall 5'x3'x1' would be fine. It can probably hold tens of thousands. Even with a new blade daily that's decades. And when you tear down the wall you're dealing with Sheetrock, nails and screws already. All that time would have dulled the incredibly thin blades.
This is all to say: it seems wild but was a decent idea.
This was behind the medicine cabinet in my house.
I think this is the first real TIL for me in ages.
Congrats ☺️
Wall full of tetanus.
Remodeling contractors hate this one trick..
How bad could it be? They’d all be piled up at the bottom of one stud cavity and you know they’re there. If you’re demoing the wall you’re gonna have gloves and a shop vac and a bigass broom and shovel anyway.
Still I got a little blade bank (about the size of those mini soda cans) on Amazon for $7 for my double-edge blades. Last year. And it still has plenty of room in it. Supposedly it holds 300 blades. That’s two blades a week for nearly 3 years. An absurd frequency…I replace my blade every week and I shave my head and they could totally go longer, they’re just so damn cheap.
I think these plastic boxes the blades come in often have a slot for used blades on the bottom. They take up so little space without the paper around them that an entire pack fits into a 1mm slot maybe.
Multiple homes I've lived in have had these slots in the medicine cabinets lol.
Did they anticipate people not living long enough to care? Or that some biome would form to use the blades as food?
Interesting decisions all around.
Prevents them from being mixes in with general garbage and people cutting themselves when handling such.
Makes sense!
Yeah we had a 1920s house with a metal medicine cabinet above the sink. It had the razor blade slot and yeah they literally fell into the wall between the studs.
If I had this in my home, I would draw a face around this "mouth".
I still use safety razors. I get all excited when I'm at a bathroom that I can slip one in the wall.
Safety razors are the best! They are cheap, you can buy a bunch of quality blades for pennies compared to a "Mach 3" or whatever.
Once you learn how to shave with one, there's no going back.
What's different about shaving with one as opposed to a regular disposable?
They're much less irritating to your skin. Disposable razor commercials sold the world on the idea that more blades=closer and smoother shave; when in reality they can really tear up your face and leave razor bumps and ingrown hairs.
Just crazy cheap. I spent probably 5 dollars on shaving last year. That's using the most expensive blades made.
They also don't have plastic housings which is nice from a waste perspective
Cost! The cheap disposable blades are horrible to shave with. The good ones are crazy expensive.
Good quality safety razors are cheap! I bought a pack of blades and it’s lasted me literally years. It probably cost me $10-15 too.
Curious as to why this fell out of fashion?
The used razor blades were arming the rats who were also in the wall.
狗娘养的 - Reavers!
Wet shaving is still very much a thing; in fact in the last decade or so, it's had a renaissance of sorts (tho it was probably re-gaining popularity already in the early 00's). I've been a wet shaver for 2.5 years but decided to buy me an electric shaver because these days I have less time for wet shaving. It can done be quickly but what's the point if you've got to rush it. Links for those who got curious:
https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/
It can done be quickly but what’s the point if you’ve got to rush it
Yep a good shave needs time and most of all four passes: first with the grain, that's for the colleagues, second two at right angles to the grain, that's for your lover, and the fourth one against the grain, for personal satisfaction.
OTOH if you know what you're doing a quick and dirty shave is just as good as an electric one and you don't have to deal with batteries. If a short buzz cut is all you want do that.
The whole setup is a bit of a bother if you're new but basic guidelines:
That sounds like shaving with extra steps.
You're completely right, I described shaving with the extra steps of figuring out what to buy and why to buy it as well as showering and making coffee. I even briefly touched on cooking.
I mentioned this elsewhere but unless you have sensitive skin you should be able to use a safety razor pretty much like a 3 or 5 blade, ie without a ton of prep. Pretty much wet your face, apply cream (although I haven't tried it with the cheap foam stuff bc I stopped using those awhile ago), and go to town.
If you want to make it a whole thing it will probably get you a super close shave in the end, but if your goal is just to shave before work it should work fine in the same amount of time as the multi-blades. I've never had much luck with an electric-- I've got pretty thick hair and electrics inevitably pull at some of my hairs instead of cutting (I've never tried a high end electric though), so discovering safety razors was great for me.
Thanks for sharing the instructions with folks here. As I said above, I've been a traditional wet shaver for two and a half years, so I pretty much know all this. However, wet shaving takes a lot of time for me and for various physical reasons and limitations, I cannot spend a long time shaving. I've learned how to speed up the process, but this means sloppier technique and it shows on my skin. At this point I want to give my skin a break by having a short stubble rather than going for BBS (that stands for BaBy Smooth) every single time. 😄 I don't mean to scare people away from traditional wet shaving, I'm just speaking for myself, who happens to have some motor function problems etc. If you're fairly "normal", there should be no reason not to try traditional wet shaving. It's a treat and something to look forward to every single time.
how is this a "meme"?
I’ve totally been throwing ancient screenshots at almost-matching communities lately, including here, because I am trying get Lemmy some momentum – Lemmentum if you will – and be the change I want to see.
But yeah no meme here.
My dad's workplace had something similar in the 1960s-70s. It was a plane hangar that was used by the baggage handlers.
The walls were cinder block so hollow from top to bottom, they would open up the boxes of the mini alcohol bottles that would go on the planes and take handfuls of them out, once the bottles were empty they would dump them down the same hole until they actually filled one up then started on a new one.
That would have been a surprise when that hangar got demolished and that wall opened up.
If they aren't going to recycle which rarely happens even today that is probably just as good of a solution as landfilling them, those little bottles are littered all over the earth. When they demolish a building they would trash all that debris anyway, but yeah a hilarious find, hundreds of them lol.
Probably more like thousands. The building was high enough to fit a passenger plane. So the space in one cinder block hole would 6 in x 6 in by 60 ft high. That is a lot of mini bottles.
I thought people use those plastic blade disposal container that has a slot on top that you throw away once it gets full nowadays.
It's not built into the wall, but the base principle still hasn't changed even after all these times.
I've seen medicine cabinets in old houses with razor disposal slots in the back.
Fuckin razor blades. Where do they go?
Ngl, this sounds like the premise to a GREAT horror show, like American Horror Story. :-P
Surely better than in your foot?
