Another Room Dedicated to Keeping Things Cool
This is called a cold closet. It could be seen as a predecessor to the pantry, but it was specially designed to keep things cool, usually at the edge of the house. They held fruits and veggies before most people had access to refrigerators.
They couldn’t keep food frozen, but they were the perfect place to keep vegetables, dairy products, and meats fresher for longer. During harvest time, people stored herbs and produce in these cold closets to keep them from rotting, and if you have access to one, you can still use it if your fridge is full.
Sure to be Endless Fun for Kids
If you're in a very old home, or one that hasn't been renovated in a long while, you may end up stubbing your toe on a random button set into the floor – there may also be some in the walls. If you have a servant in the home, these buttons might still get some use, but most people will want them gone.
They signaled a helper to attend to the master of the house. Placing the button on the floor meant it would be easier to hit it no matter what kind of furniture was in the room.
A Mini Kitchen Outside
Seen most often in New England, homes sometimes have an outdoor barn not connected to the main house. They come fully equipped with large fireplaces and stone ovens. These things create huge amounts of heat, and during the summer there's plenty of that to go around. These Summer Kitchens stayed away from the home to keep temperatures cooler.
They were popular in the nineteenth century, but thanks to modern appliances and cooling this kind of building is no longer required, but they're an interesting way to look into the past. Some summer kitchens also contained bedrooms for servants or slaves.
A More Recent Feature
Not many people have a lot of use for a landline anymore. That means the number of phone jacks people are using has dropped dramatically. Internet service providers still need them, but if you have a modern modem and router, you should only need one in your home, when just a few decades ago every single room needed one, without a doubt.
As wi-fi becomes more and more popular, the phone jack will slowly become less useful. Eventually, we may not need them at all, which is sure to make architects and interior designers happier.
Might as Well Use Them as Coasters
Technology grows by leaps and bounds, and something that used to be ubiquitous and common in the nineties, and even the 2000s, is now hopelessly outdated. So goes the sad song of the floppy disk, which in our current age might as well be used for something else – a single email holds far more information.
Unless you're an internet historian or want to teach your kids about the dark days of the early World Wide Web, toss these in the trash. Anything you can get from them is free on the internet, most likely.