My parents had to cut into the wall of their 1940s home to fix a water leak… and we were HORRIFIED by what we found in there
A woman has revealed she made an amazing find behind her parents’ wall after they were forced to cut into it due to a leak.
Elizabeth regularly shows off her renovation skills on her TikTok channel, where she has over 3,000 followers.
Recently, the US-based content creator and renovator took to the video-sharing platform to show what she found hidden in the wall of her parents’ 1940s home.
In a clip, Elizabeth shared footage of the pile of razor blades she found in her family’s home.
Elizabeth has revealed that she found an amazing discovery behind her parents’ wall after they were forced to cut into it due to a leak
The US-based maker and renovator took to the video-sharing platform to show what she found hidden in the wall of her parents’ 1940s home
In a clip, Elizabeth shared footage of the pile of razor blades she found in her family’s home
She captioned the clip, “Have you ever seen this? Oh what you find in an old house!’
“Okay, so we work in my parents’ house that was built in the 1940s, and the bathroom had a small leak, so we had to cut into the wall, and we couldn’t believe what we found in the wall,” he said. them at the beginning of the clip.
Then she showed a stack of razor blades. “Look at all those razor blades,” she said.
Elizabeth added, “Those are all razor blades,” as she moved the stack.
“Apparently they used to do this. When they needed to change their razor blades, they stuck them against the wall,” she said.
At the end of the video, Elizabeth said she “didn’t get it,” but many viewers flooded her comment section to reveal that this used to be a common practice.
One person said, “We still have the original medicine cabinet in one of our bathrooms, it has a little opening for the razors. Our wall is probably full!’
“Yeah, the original medicine cabinet had a razor slot…my grandparents had one too,” another user added.
At the end of the video, Elizabeth said she “didn’t get it,” but many viewers flooded her comment section to reveal that this used to be a common practice.
Someone else wrote: “Every bathroom sink had a slot where you put the razor blades.”
‘Yes! Hotels had that too!’ one person noticed.
In the past, many people found razor blades discarded behind walls, while others even shared stories of finding the blades in their own homes.
“My parents were renovating some stuff and razor blades started pouring out of the wall next to our bathroom and I have to explain this phenomenon lol, we found at least 30 (this also happened in Texas for good measure),” one person wrote .
“We’re in the Chicago area. We broke down our bathroom walls a few years ago and old, rusted sheets literally poured out of the wall behind the sink like the skulls in RotK,” said another user.
“I just removed a medicine cabinet insert from a bathroom in a c. 1860s house I’m restoring in Maine, and I found hundreds of razor blades behind it. I was so confused until I saw the little slit. Then I was just extrapolated!’ someone else added.
Today, the slots are no longer needed as most people use completely disposable razors.
But that was not always the case. At the beginning of the twentieth century, men who wanted to shave their faces went to a barbershop, where a professional shaved them with a razor.
In 1903, Gillette came up with an alternative for men to use at home: a double-edged safety razor.
In the past, many people found razor blades discarded behind walls, while others even shared stories of finding the blades in their own homes
In 1903, Gillette came up with an alternative for men to use at home: a double-edged safety razor
But these disposable blades created a problem because they couldn’t be thrown in the trash. First, the sharp blades were unsafe for people handling the waste, but they could also end up in people’s gardens, as waste was often burned in the 1930s and 1940s and the ashes spread in gardens.
So according to Reader’s Digest, these razor blades were invented as a way to safely dispose of the blades. Because the blades were so small, the idea was that they would take a very, very long time to fill a wall cavity.
“Old medicine cabinets were installed right inside the interior walls,” Richard D’Angelo, project manager at JWE Remodeling and Roofing, told Reader’s Digest.
‘These old units had a slot in the back used to dispose of used blades, which allowed them to drop into the wall cavity between the frame posts and collect on top of the bottom plate post.
“We’ve found piles of razor blades in the walls at least 10 times when we do renovations and restorations on older homes,” D’Angelo added.
“We even found them once in the ceiling of the first floor: they fell through the wall of the bathroom on the second floor, through a hole made for pipes and into the ceiling cavity of the kitchen. When we demolished the old plaster ceiling, the razor blades came down. Luckily no one was hurt!’