Our first home had one. My grandparents home had one. I think my parents had one, too. Of course, not until today did I know what it was for.
Go to your bathroom and open the medicine cabinet. Does it have a small slit on the back of it? I’ll wait. Not sure what I’m talking about? Ok, it looks like this:
The hole could be up on the top or toward the bottom, but if you live in a home that was built between the 1920’s and 1980’s, your medicine cabinet probably has one of these. What’s it for? Believe it or not – razor blades!
Apparently, back before we had disposable razors, people would buy a 5 pack of just razor blades to shave with. The shaver’s top opened for you to put the blade in.
Throwing used blades in the trash brought about some concerns. So, to lessen the chance for injury for sanitation workers, people disposed of them in that little slot at the back of the medicine cabinet. That being said, if you have a razor slot it probably also means that your wall may be full of hundreds or more of someone’s old, rusty, used razor blades.
Just the thought of that is kind of disgusting, but really, who is going to see them? Probably no one, unless you are remodeling your bathroom. Then, when you ripped out that old medicine cabinet …
I was totally oblivious to this fact, but now I know (in the words of Paul Harvey) “the rest of the story!”
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 
I had no idea!
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Me either…..
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That’s pretty wild. I’ve seen some med. cabinets that have that but never gave it much thought. Wonder if anyone ever ended up filling the space up?
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Huh – who knew?
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Your text appears to suggest that in the long run disposable razors make more sense than disposable blades. Where do you recycle metals? And where do you recycle plastics?
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I disagree. I wasn’t saying disposable razors make more sense. I simply noted that in the days before them, they disposed of the blades instead. The whole point of this was that I had no idea of the blade disposal in a medicine cabinet slot.
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go figure!
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Sorry it took me so long. I remember now seeing one of those in a episode where they flipped a house. Hey it’s a great idea! I’m lazy now….you know what I use to shave? I use my trimmer…it works great because I don’t like a down to the skin shave…it goes pretty far though.
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