Young homeowners have been left baffled after finding mysterious slots behind their bathroom cabinets - and the reason for them being there is even weirder.
Remodeling a home can come with all sorts of surprises - some more costly and stressful to solve than others.
But at the end of it, you finally get to live in a property that's completely to your taste and upgraded - even if you happen to stumble across some weird 'quirks' along the way.
Many young homeowners have taken to TikTok after discovering mysterious slots at the back of their medicine cabinets - and the reason they're there has left them windblown.
One TikToker took to the social media platform to reveal that she'd removed her old bathroom cabinet only to find razor blades were raining down on her, as well as a host of other unexpected items.
The user, who goes by @taylorjean8teen, shared a clip of her opening her mirrored cabinet to reveal a small slot, out of which hundreds of used razor blades had come pouring out.
She revealed that as well as the razors, she'd also discovered a broken beer bottle and an empty cigarette packet stashed in the wall itself.
Now, most people would be pretty concerned at the sight of rusty razor blades that were not their own, but it turns out there's a good reason they were there.
Between the early 1900s, when the first razor blades designed for home use were first brought to the market, and the 1970s when plastic razors were first introduced, people needed a safe way to dispose of their old blades.
So somewhere along the way, the solution for this became putting a slot in the back of the bathroom cabinet, into which the blades could be dropped, to remain inside the wall.
This was so they would remain safely away from where children or pets could accidentally hurt themselves on a used blade, and, presumably, become someone else's problem to get rid of several years down the line.
Prior to 1903, when Gilette created the at-home double razor blade, men would usually get their shaves done by a barber with a straight-edged razor.
However, once they could keep their beards trimmed at home, the problem of how to dispose of the blades soon arose, as they could not be disposed of easily or burned, meaning a new idea had to be created.
As medicine cabinets were usually installed directly into the wall, the tiny slot was added so that the blades could be dropped into it, never to be seen again (until someone wants to modernize that room, that is....).
By the 1970s, Bic had created the disposable razor with a plastic handle, and combined with improvements in the way household refuse was collected and disposed of, the razor slot became obsolete pretty quickly.
So if you ever end up buying an old property and want to fit a new bathroom, just bear in mind that you may end up with a shower of rusty old razor blades if you're knocking into any of the walls.
