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Do You Have A Razor Blade Slot In Your Medicine Cabinet Or On Your Wall?

My 2nd house had one and still does. The house was sold. I put blades down it when and if I shaved there. I don't know about the previous owner but since the house was built in 1960, I'm sure someone besides me disposed of blades using that method. I normally use an empty Pringles can to dispose of blades.
 

Whisky

ATF. I use all three.
Staff member
Nope. But I wish it did. They were very common in houses built from the 30s to the mid 60s. Most of the time when we would do bathroom remodels we would find blades rusted into a big lump in the wall cavity. The most I’ve ever seen in one wall cavity filled the void between the studs about 1/2 way to the medicine cabinet so about 2ft or so. I wasn’t DE shaving then but thinking back there had to be 50yrs of razors in that space. House was built in late 40’s and had the same owners until they passed away and then family bought the house and remodeled the bathroom. We remodeled it in the late 90’s. Most of the older houses had plaster over metal lathe instead of sheet rock so there was never really any danger of pounding through sheet rock into a mass of rusted razors (also, who does demo without gloves?) I was more worried about cutting myself on the metal lathe than old razors.
 
If so do you use it to for your used blades?
I have one in my medicine cabinet and have been using it for awhile.
I've seen the one on the wall as well in other houses.

interesting enough, we just bought a home built in 1894. It has a slot in the medicine cabinet. I’m not sure if that dates back to 1894, or if that is a newer (1950’s?) replacement. Did these slots exist in the 1800’s? Also, are these safe to use? Do the blades cause some sort of harm as they build up?
 
My house was built in 1957, has 2.5 bathrooms, and the master bath and half bath have the slots. I drop my blades into the slot in the master bath regularly.
 
Back in 1960’s and before, Blade came in Metal Dispensers.

Those dispensers had slot in back to hold used blades.

They went out with trash.
 
I’ve always lived in houses with slotted medicine cabinets … until about ten years ago, when I started dating again as a widower. During a bathroom remodel, I was informed by GF at the time that they weren’t cool. Later, I married someone else, and we just recently renovated most of the house, and created a new master bedroom downstairs. My wife informed me that medicine cabinets still aren’t cool.

Choose your battles. I dug in my heels where it mattered, gave in where it didn’t, and started using a blade safe.
 

Rhody

I'm a Lumberjack.
These aren't the greatest ideas of humanity. Bathrooms tend to have lots of electric wiring. It's unlikely, but possible, that a blade might land on a wire, and over time, work its way through the insulation, and make a short.

In this house I'm living in now, some idiot stapled the Romex to the bottom of the joist rather than running through it, and then some other idiot stapled fiberglass insulation over that. It took a couple of decades for the disaster to occur, and after a day of checking all the junction boxes, eventually I had to tear out a celing to find the dead short in the wires.

Mind you, this shouldn't be a problem if the installation of everything was done right in the first place and no bozos have monkeyed with anything in the intervening years. But good luck with that.
This happened to us with new construction. Some bozo left wire loose in between studs not stapled to a stud. It got frozen in place with the spray foam insulation. Years later someone was installing hvac and innocently drilled through what should have been a cavity and completely severed that wire.

Which makes me think, the razor wall slot was a thing in turn of the century houses. Fun idea until someone needed to remodel or just open up the bottom of a wall. Surprise! 100s of rusty blades ready to exact revenge for their improper burial. Textbook lack of foresight.
 
Our basement is all new construction except for the garage, right down to much of the slab being cut for new and replacement drain. When hanging the organizers in our new walk-in closet, I discovered a hidden plastic junction box right behind the drywall. Luckily, I didn’t hit any wires (verified with a non-conductive probe, no wires in the drill path).

Wiring in a nearby area was expected. I had already measured outlet locations on the opposite wall, along with stud locations, and I did use a wiring checker to be safe (or so I thought). Apparently the cluster of wires in the box confused it. it was a weird place for a box too - definitely not where I would have put it based on the load locations.

However, the first electrician retired partway through the job. He also used a lot of outlets that no longer meet code. Cleaning out his inventory I guess. He left a lot of problems to fix.
 
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