When people first started developing tools to make life easier, every single little detail of a tool had a specific purpose. Nothing they did was by accident or simply for flare. Even what was meant to be artwork had a specific purpose that had to do with either religious beliefs or common everyday activities. Everything was very intentional, and nothing was abstract.

This makes sense when you consider how few raw materials were being used, and that everything you were using in your craft had to be painstakingly harvested or gathered by hand. When a project consists of back-breaking work, the designs tend to become pretty practical. Most of us might not know it, but that is still the case with many of our everyday items today.

From soda cans and can openers to seams and tape measuring machines, there are tiny details in the design that may at first seem purely aesthetic but that actually serve a very useful purpose. Sometimes their purpose may even seem blatantly obvious, but in reality the product’s intended purpose is something you never thought of! Here are 40+ everyday things you didn’t know the purpose of.