SHOULD ROCKING CHAIRS MAKE A COMEBACK?

Laundry Chutes And 9 Other Ingenious Home Hacks That Are No Longer In Use

Image: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Many technological solutions of the past that have been replaced by newer inventions still linger in old houses. Some of them, you might even have seen in your grandparent’s home or somewhere else. A number of these old features, like the laundry chute, are quite handy even in this day and age. Take a look at the following ten items and see if you can recognize some of them.

Image: Quino Al

Until a couple of decades ago, landline telephones were an essential means of communication. Every place had one and it was a communal device for every person in that location. Telephones were big, sturdy, and quite elegant, actually. But they weren’t always so compact.

Because of their big, heavy stature, they required quite a bit of space. Homes used to have niches in walls for this purpose. These phones had cords, so people had to stand around to talk. Hence, phone niches often appeared in hallways, kitchens, and bedrooms.

Image: Marcos Assis

It might seem odd today but, up until around 1940, most families heated their homes by burning coal. Coal delivery men traveled door-to-door to provide people with the fuel to power their furnaces.

These men shoveled coal through a small door and down the chute into the basement. Once in the basement, homeowners could shovel the coal directly into the furnace. Today most of these chutes have been sealed, though you will often still see the iron doors on older homes.

Image: Grant Durr

Not to be confused with the famous Murphy bed, which folds into a closet or wall to save floor space when not in use, the Sorlien ceiling bed was stowed in the ceiling. This device was lowered from the ceiling via a crank, with hidden weights in the wall working to counterbalance the bed.

The obvious advantage of this bed was that it took up no closet or wall space, with floor space used only when in service. The ceiling bed only worked for houses with an attic above.

Image: Stefan Steinbauer

Even basic things like light switches evolve. There was a time when those humble but useful devices had not one but two buttons for each light. One to turn on the light, one to turn it off.

The button you pushed, stayed down. And, when you pushed a button, the one that was down, popped right up. Neat, right?

Image: Melanie Kreutz

It seems like a quite useful thing to have if your shoes are dirty and you need to scrape them off before entering a place, right? If you’ve ever walked up to someone’s front door and seen a strange ground-level cast-iron contraption, that is it: it’s a boot scraper.

In some homes, these tiny iron ornaments still stick out in front of the door. Many include ornate spirals and designs, including animals. Usually, two boot scrapers would border the door at the end of a walkway.

Image: Ray Shrewsberry

Root cellars were used to store vegetables, fruits, nuts, and other things for long periods. Some were simply an unfinished room in the basement while others were built into the ground a short distance from the house.

Modern refrigeration has rendered root cellars unnecessary for most people. But if you have one, you can certainly still put it to good use and store foods that maybe don’t need to be frozen but are best kept at a cooler temperature than that room.

Image: Nacho Fernández

If the idea of a dark space full of rusty razor blades right in your bathroom gives you the chills, you are not alone. But there was a time when that was a real thing. A couple of decades ago, medicine cabinets had a tiny slit to dispose of old razor blades. Where might those dirty razors go? Nowhere, really. They merely went into the wall.

If someone were to remove the medicine cabinet, they’d likely see all the discarded razors. Keep that in mind if you plan to have someone replace your old cabinet.

Image: Jason Murphy

Once upon a time, milk was delivered door to door in the early morning hours by milkmen dressed in white overalls. That is why having a milk door was standard in many homes. The small door was situated on the outside of the house and was used by the milkman to pick up empty bottles and leave fresh ones.

Milkmen usually delivered the drinks early in the morning so families could drink milk with breakfast. Sometimes, milkmen would deliver other products such as eggs, cheese, butter, and soft drinks.

Image: Kaylah Matthews

Imagine not having to drive a nail through your walls to hang a picture. It would be convenient, right? Well, until some decades ago, that was the norm. Enter picture hanging molding.

The whole contraption looked like, well, a molding design in the upper segment of the interior walls. Movable hooks were hung from such rails and, in turn, pictures were suspended from those hooks.

Image: engin akyurt

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a little door on your bathroom wall where you could simply toss your laundry and have it fall right next to the washing machine? Well, there was a time when that was the case in many homes with more than one story.

Laundry chutes were designed to relieve the burden of carrying laundry. They're so handy that many people still install them today. No one knows who invented the first laundry chute, or when. Newspaper articles describing early linen chutes date back to the 1890s.

Some names stick around

From Table Tap Joe to Ziggy Stardust: Who are the best song characters?

Sometimes, a character is the perfect alter-ego to write a song about oneself without self-referencing so much. Other times, a character is just a character. Over the years, musicians have come up with lonely dreamers, fearless heroes, mysterious strangers, and even supernatural villains who have become just as famous as the songs themselves. Some were inspired by real people, others sprang entirely from imagination, but all of them left a lasting mark on music history. Which of these 12 do you remember?

Tom Waits has always had a soft spot for society's oddballs, and few are even stranger than Table Top Joe. Introduced on the 2002 album Alice, Joe is born with only a head and hands, yet grows into a brilliant piano player whose extraordinary talent earns him fame despite the odds stacked against him.

The song unfolds like a forgotten American folk tale, complete with references to Coney Island's legendary Dreamland amusement park and composer Igor Stravinsky. Although many listeners assume the story is based on an old carnival legend, Table Top Joe is entirely Tom Waits' own creation.

Few fictional musicians have ever become as famous as Ziggy Stardust. Introduced in 1972, Ziggy is an alien rock star sent to Earth shortly before humanity's end, only to be consumed by the very fame that makes him a savior to millions.

David Bowie blurred the line between fiction and reality by performing as Ziggy onstage for more than a year. When he unexpectedly announced Ziggy's retirement during a concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, many fans believed the character, and perhaps Bowie himself, had truly reached the end of the story.

Tommy Walker isn't just the hero of a song, he's the central figure of one of rock music's first great operas. After witnessing a traumatic event as a child, Tommy becomes deaf, mute, and blind, yet somehow develops astonishing pinball skills that transform him into an unlikely celebrity.

Pete Townshend built an entire musical world around Tommy, exploring themes of trauma, faith, and redemption. First released in 1969, Tommy later became a hit film, a Broadway production, and one of the most influential concept albums ever recorded.

Johnny B. Goode is every aspiring musician's dream. Growing up in rural Louisiana with little more than a guitar and natural talent, he plays so brilliantly that listeners predict "his name will be in lights."

Chuck Berry based the character partly on himself and partly on pianist Johnnie Johnson. Originally described as a "colored boy," Johnny became a "country boy" in the final lyrics, making the song more likely to receive airplay during the segregation era. Nearly two decades later, Johnny's anthem would even travel into space aboard NASA's Voyager Golden Record.

Few fictional characters have captured loneliness as powerfully as Eleanor Rigby. She quietly moves through life unnoticed, while Father McKenzie delivers sermons that no one hears, creating one of popular music's saddest portraits of isolation.

Paul McCartney later explained that Eleanor's name came from actress Eleanor Bron and the Liverpool shop Rigby & Evens. The discovery of an actual Eleanor Rigby gravestone in Liverpool only deepened the song's mystique, though McCartney maintained the coincidence was unintentional.

Billie Jean may be one of pop music's most famous women, yet Michael Jackson insisted she wasn't a real person. Instead, she represented several women who falsely claimed that he had fathered their children during the height of the Jackson 5's fame.

Released in 1983 as part of Thriller, the song became a global phenomenon. It also provided the stage for Jackson's legendary moonwalk during Motown 25.

Unlike many legendary song characters, Stagger Lee actually existed. His real name was Lee Shelton, a St. Louis criminal who murdered Billy Lyons during an argument over a hat on Christmas Eve in 1895.

The shocking crime quickly entered American folklore through countless folk songs before Lloyd Price transformed it into a chart-topping hit in 1958. More than a century later, Stagger Lee remains one of the most enduring antiheroes in American music.

Tom Dooley was inspired by Thomas Dula, a Confederate veteran executed in North Carolina in 1868 after being convicted of murdering Laura Foster. His surname was locally pronounced "Dooley," giving the ballad its familiar title.

The Kingston Trio revived the old Appalachian folk song in 1958, turning it into an international hit and helping launch America's folk music revival.

When the narrator of "Lola" meets an intriguing stranger in a Soho nightclub, expectations quickly give way to surprise. Ray Davies crafted one of rock's earliest mainstream stories exploring gender ambiguity, decades before the topic entered popular conversation.

The recording rarely reached British radio. Because BBC rules prohibited commercial product names, Davies had to interrupt a U.S. tour and fly back to London simply to replace the lyric "Coca-Cola" with the now-famous "cherry cola."

Unlike most famous song characters, the Piano Man is really Billy Joel himself. Before becoming a superstar, Joel spent six months in 1972 and 1973 performing under the pseudonym Bill Martin at the Executive Room, a piano bar in Los Angeles, after becoming trapped in a bad recording contract. The song transforms those experiences into a bittersweet portrait of ordinary people searching for escape at the end of another week.

Joel has said that virtually every character in the song was based on a real person, from bartender John to "Paul, the real estate novelist" and Davy, who really was in the Navy. Yet the Piano Man himself became the story's most enduring character: a quiet observer who offers music as a brief refuge for dreamers, lonely souls, and regulars alike. More than fifty years after its 1973 release, "Piano Man" remains Billy Joel's signature song, and its title has effectively become his lifelong nickname.

Standing nearly seven feet tall and missing an arm, Amos Moses roams the Louisiana swamps hunting alligators. Jerry Reed filled the song with colorful Southern expressions and exaggerated storytelling that make Amos feel like an authentic folk legend.

Although fictional, Amos embodies the larger-than-life heroes found throughout American tall tales. His adventures turned the song into one of Reed's biggest crossover hits and secured Amos a permanent place among country music's greatest characters.

Big Bad John hardly says a word, but he doesn't have to. The towering coal miner earns everyone's respect through quiet strength before sacrificing his own life to save fellow workers when a mine collapses.

Jimmy Dean's 1961 ballad became a smash hit, winning a Grammy and inspiring several sequel songs. More than sixty years later, Big Bad John still stands as one of country music's defining working-class heroes.