If you live in an older building, you might have one of the best living-space designs ever conceived in your medicine cabinet.
Wet shavers have a dilemma not really faced by cartridge or electric users: how to safely get rid of those used blades?
Back in the day, companies would offer blade banks as promo items. Just a tin box with a slot cut in the top, festooned with ‘Shave With Barbasol’ or whatever on the side. Drop your old blades into it until full, get rid of the box, safe, easy, green (box and blades would quickly deteriorate).
I (now that I live in a newer place) and many other wet shavers use homemade blade banks made from soup cans or some other container to store our used blades.
Users of cartridges can pop them back into the slot they came from. When the pack is full, dispose of that ounce or two of plastic and do your part to KILL THE PLANET!
…just kidding, cartridge blade users. Who loves ya more than I do?
Anyway, an ingenious method to get rid of blades was to pop them through a slot cut into the wall. There they would rest behind the sheetrock until the end of time (or a carpenter came in to remodel the bathroom and they spill out when the wall was torn away).
Hotels had this slot. Homes usually had a slot cut into the back of the medicine cabinet. Best innovation since indoor plumbing.
A few years ago, Lance Morrow wrote a great essay for Time Magazine on this topic and the art of wet shaving. This post is pretty much my repository for this link, ’cause it’ll just get lost in my bookmarks otherwise.