Why There Might Be Razor Blades Inside Your Home’s Walls

There’s a lot of things you don’t want to ever find inside your walls: mold, termites, human remains, or razor blades. But apparently, that last one could possibly be found inside your walls if your house was built prior to 1970.

And no, these weren’t an essential building tool in home construction. Instead, they were more of a solution to a specifically male problem.

You see, back before the invention of the modern razor with its plastic safety cartridges, people – specifically men – used to shave using the straight-edge razors found in most barbershops at the time. Then, in 1903, Gillette invented the first-ever at-home option for men to do their shaving at home.

The only problem was, these early disposable razors weren’t quite that disposable. They didn’t have the same safety features of today, so they were often still sharp and couldn’t just be thrown away in the trash.

Back in the 1930s and 40s, people would often burn their trash and toss in the razors. However, since they were metal, they often wouldn’t burn. It wasn’t until the 1950s came along that a strange solution was found.

As Richard D’Angelo, Project Manager at JWE Remodeling and Roofing, explained to Reader’s Digest, “Old medicine cabinets were installed directly inside the interior walls. These old units had a slot in the back that was used to discard used blades, which would allow them to fall into the wall cavity between framing studs, and collect on top of the bottom-plate stud.”

Of course, this meant that sometimes you’d get a very sharp surprise if you were ever moving into a new home and then doing some home remodeling.

D’Angelo added, “We have found stacks of razor blades in the walls at least a dozen times when we do remodels and restorations of older homes. We even once found them in the ceiling of the first floor: they fell through the wall from the second-floor bathroom, down a hole made for plumbing pipes, and into the ceiling cavity of the kitchen. When we demolished the old plaster ceiling, the razors came raining down. Luckily no one was hurt!”

So, next time you’re moving into an old house, you might want to think twice before taking out that sledgehammer. Did you know about the razors inside walls? What’s the strangest thing that you’ve ever found inside your house’s walls when remodeling? Let us know!