THE LUMBER-ROOM
by Ilia Utekhin
(See Illustrations)
The storage room is a model of the whole communal apartment (CA),
it is a special CA for material objects. Apart from being used in this or that way,
the diverse artefacts stored there belong to different owners, but have the same fate.
They are just living here together, like people live in a CA.
In the recent decades, when the lack of space in CAs became less sensible
and a whole room sometimes even could remain unoccupied after the inhabitants
had moved elsewhere, a new kind of places appeared in CAs. Instead of keeping
their things in small storage closets of a very reduced volume and with no
window, specially intended for this purpose, or instead of filling the corridors and
antechambers with old furniture, the tenants used to request for their common
use a spare room left unoccupied so that to locate there as much lumber as
possible. At the same time, such room can often be used not only as a storage
facility, but also for drying clothes after laundry or for smoking, that is, can
combine several seemingly hardly compatible functions.
As a rule, before coming to common use, this room was the worst in the
apartment and thus no one of the neighbours wanted to occupy it in order to
better his own living conditions. To get such a room for someone's personal use
was possible, but it meant that having got additional space, one lost the right to
take part in the further struggle for much better rooms that could become
available in the future. Neighbours usually claimed before ZHEK (housing administration)
that the room in question was not fit for living - and thus for placing there to eventual newcomers.
They adduced such arguments as bad state of the ceiling due to repeated leakage,
scarce light because of a small window or too bad sound insulation. The technical
commission of ZHEK recognised this fact officially, giving to the room a special
status of auxiliary space intended for common use.
Although all the regulations contain an unambiguous ban on encumbering
the corridors and antechambers with old furniture and the like, hardly ever existed a CA with no
wardrobes or tables outside the living rooms that in spite of the regulations block
up the passage. These pieces of furniture are private and so in a way they have "privatised"
zones of common space. They may be regarded as functional in
case if clothes and footwear are stored there, but often they contain the things
very rarely used, which have no place for them in the living rooms. Being on the
periphery of the owners' activities, they take their correspondent place on the
periphery of the living space. However, among the things used on special
occasions, there are many ones which cannot be held in wardrobes or carton
boxes. These are, for instance, bicycles and sledges, skis and ski-sticks, etc., that
usually were placed hanging from the ceiling or from the walls in classic CA
period. When a free room for common use appears, all these things are being
moved into it.
CA tenants do not reflect the main function of this room in the word they
use for it. They do not call it "storage room" and, strictly speaking, they are right,
because lumber-room is another place in the apartment, though usually fallen into
disuse since the new facility became available for analogous purposes. It is called
"empty room", "dark" or "black" room. Sometimes it is referred to as "smoking
room" according to its secondary (and not always present) function, or "drying
room" (Russian: "sushil'naia"), or by the name of its former inhabitant ("X's
room"), the more so if any stories about X and his life in this room are
remembered, or any elements of interior decoration remind of him.
No key is required to enter this room, the door is usually open. A weak
bulb without lampshade, as it is typical for common use places, casts its poor
light on this ensemble of heterogeneous objects. Here is an attempt to classify
provisionally a typical content of such lumber-room:
a) all kinds of empty containers of different types, sizes and materials, such as
wooden and carton boxes, especially those initially used for domestic appliance
and electronics, or parcel boxes, as well as baskets and chests; some of them
filled with lesser objects from other categories;
b) among the containers: used handbags, suitcases, rucksacks etc., which
eventually contain something, but many of them empty;
c) empty bottles and jars in bags, boxes, on the shelves, or right on the floor;
d) used footwear and clothes of all sizes, in different containers (from wardrobes
to cartons) or without them, just hanging from the walls (clothes) or put on the
floor (footwear); clothes fit for a different season (winter clothes in summer and
summer clothes, in winter);
e) rags; often there are whole sacks or cartons full of rags;
f) wash-basins, wash-tubs, mainly damaged ones (those which are actually used
for laundry are placed in the bath-room or in the corridor, often hanging on the
walls);
g) buckets, brooms, a floor-cloth, etc. tools for cleaning, of private and common
use; the private ones include vacuum-cleaners;
h) tools for repair and maintenance, such as ladders, paint-brushes and jars with
paint; in separate boxes or old cases, metalwork and joinery tools, jars or little
cartons full of screws and nails; some axes, saws and spades;
i) construction materials for repairs of the apartment and country houses
(dachas);
j) various domestic equipment, usually broken and out of use: tv-sets, radios,
freezers, vacuum-cleaners, electric irons (and non-electric ones, at best used
today as weights for sauerkraut);
k) all sorts of broken lamps and lighting devices with their lampshades and
cables, or separate details of them;
l) old and mostly broken furniture of all kinds;
m) rolled up carpets; curtains, coverlets, blankets;
n) folding beds and chaises longues (some of them broken)
o) bicycles, sledges, skis and other sporting equipment; details of bicycles,
especially wheels; hand carts and prams;
p) old books (often schoolbooks among them) packed in cartons or piled on the
floor; old LPs; old copybooks and notepads of actual and former school-children or
students;
q) the same as p), but regarded as waste paper fit for pulp ("makulatura") and
prepared to be brought to a special shop of utility waste;
r) garbage;
This list gives a general idea and cannot be exhaustive. That is because
you can only grasp the principle, but you cannot predict exactly the result of its
implementation, as any particular circumstances have their speciality: if, for
instance, there were musical instruments in a family, they (or their parts) could
be moved one day to the storage room. Nevertheless, the categories outlined
above are typical and almost obligatory. Of course, we can legitimately add to the
list "s)" used objects of relatively big size, related to someone"s old and
abandoned hobbies", and give even more detailed account, mentioning
photographic enlargers etc. But the keywords "old", "used", "objects",
"abandoned" which, taken together, seem to make the definition of "s)"
somewhat redundant. We can infer that old toys and broken umbrellas also take
refuge here. Another key-phrase would be "used on special occasions" for
auxiliary domestic tools of small material value. Thus, special ritual appliance to
install the Christmas-tree will also be here (though Christmas-tree toys and
adornments will be not, as they are more valuable and could easily be stolen). In
storage room, a close surveillance on the property is not performed, and so this is
a matter of confidence between neighbours; however, the confidence is limited.
To explain this list of objects would mean to understand the structure of
the environment of artefacts in CAs, as well as the logic of their life-cycle, and
maybe also the human relations implied in this logic. Let us start from the end of
the list: r) garbage. It is not always that you can find garbage in a lumber-room,
until you regard as garbage the things from j, k, l, p, and q. However,
often "r" = "garbage" (recognised as garbage by its owner) is relevant. Why to
store it in the apartment? Why isn"t it in the dump?
The most obvious reason is the need to apply an effort so that to bring the
garbage to the dump, which is a part of the whole economy of time and everyday
life efforts. If an object (a broken piece of furniture or a sack of garbage, say,
construction garbage after repair works) is big and heavy enough, one person is
unable to do such work and needs a help. To look for the neighbours" help is
another effort, whereas having space resources to storage, one can put off this
work for indefinitely long. This fits well in "minimum effort for the maintenance
of stable environment" principle. The garbage is not in the living-rooms. It is a
sort of "out of sight, out of mind" attitude.
Another consideration is what I would call "the reverence for rubbish".
Initially motivated by poverty and, correspondingly, by the tendence to exhaust
all which can be used in a thing, this reverence means a vague idea that
everything, no matter how old and broken, may be used again some day, in this
or that way. Generally, poverty and reduced space increase the number of
valences of things: thus, chairs are also used as temporary shelves, irons or piles
of books as weights, old newspapers as table-clothes, jars as vases, etc. This is
regarded as normal. The life of things is thus enlarged and prolonged. The more
so as some men know how to repair things which are currently in use, for which
purpose they can find some useful pieces in the lumber. This line of thinking is
even kept on when the space is not so small, the poverty is not so acute. The
wish to preserve the things from discarding is a by-product of this approach. A
good illustration of it can be seen in the rows of empty jars which are never used
in this quantity and, however, remain on the shelves and in carton boxes (inside
them the jars are enveloped in old newspapers) instead of going to the dump. A
small number of jars would be, probably, useful for those who make vegetable
and fruit preserves, but such abundance of them is evidently useless.
In CAs, the things have a tendence to stop on the half-way to dump - and
the storage room is a convenient place. Newcomers who have lived in a separate
apartment, especially young women, sometimes doesn't understand their
neighbours' attitude towards lumber and explain it, saying that "it is because
they never have lived in a separate apartment where there is no place for
lumber". This explanation is only partly valid because the experience shows that
some of the former CA inhabitants even after having moved to a relatively
reduced space of a separate apartment go on collecting lumber and filling with it
all the corners and even whole rooms.
Clearly, such attitude creates some problems: however big is the storage
space - and often it is not - it is, nevertheless, limited, and thus a rotation is
necessary to bring some things to the end of the way (the dump) and to leave
place to new things. The common practice when rearranging the things in the
storage room is to propose some objects to the neighbours as a gift. It can be an
old tv-set which needs a small repair, or a piece of furniture. Curiously, although
such gifts may be also proposed immediately after having bought a new thing
instead of an old one, more usually the things pass some time in the lumber-room
before being given.
On the periphery the feeling of possession is weaker. If a neighbour"s thing
which is obviously out of use seems useful to someone, it is not unusual to go
and ask the neighbour whether this or that thing is still needed to him, and ask
permission to take it. E.g.," I've found there on your shelf a whole treasure of
science fiction. I've taken some books. Is it all right?" The man asking this
question is sure that it is all right, but regards necessary and polite to give notice
to the proprietor of the books. In another case, one informer found that some
very interesting magazines were torn and put into the bag on the interior side of
the toilet door, where the paper is intended to put on the lavatory seat. He knew
who was the owner of the magazines. It was not difficult, because earlier they
were stored in the storage room, where the space is distributed strictly enough.
So he asked for the magazines and received them. However, this freedom
observing and even taking others' possessions opens the way to eventual abuse.
The local drunkard is sometimes suspected to steal (e.g., empty bottles and jars)
from the storage room, in order to get money for them, and the question is then
discussed whether to lock the door and to distribute the keys among the
neighbours, but usually all is kept as it is.
The links with the things weaken with the time. Some things remain in the
storage room since so long ago that hardly anybody, except for the old men,
remembers what it is and who is the propietor. It is from the location that the
proprietor (who can be already dead or have moved elsewhere) always can be
established. After the death or move, the place is inherited by that who occupies
the room of the gone neighbour. The place can remain intact for long time, and
free from things after all them were taken by the heirs who may distribute a part
of the heritage among the neighbours, or just brought to the dump. If there is no
pretenders to the place (e.g., no one comes to live in the room, or its new
inhabitants do not pretend to use the storage room), it is gradually divided by
those who need it. See Fig.___ for empty hooks and nails: no one has yet
occupied this corner.
The general tendence to have more order in more tough conditions usually
is reflected also in the state of the storage room, though CAs vary considerably in
who and how regularly cleans the storage room (if it is regularly cleaned up at
all). The bad state of the room, which has been an important argument to
recognise the room as a place of common use, is not modified. No one is thinking
about repairs, whitewashing of ceilings, papering the walls etc. The floor is hardly
ever washed here. It is a logical result, for this room is generally less controlled
and the order here is not so important to the community. Thus, even if
someone's drunk guest or simply a drunk neighbour falls asleep here, it is not
serious matter if somebody reveals this fact. It does not usually lead to a scandal,
as it would be if the same took place elsewhere in the apartment.
Children like to come to the lumber-room and to play here or just to regard
its content that is exciting their interest. Principally, it is not prohibited, but
sometimes parents say that it is too dusty or that the children can damage a
neighbour's things. They don't approve the children's playing here. Apart from
the smokers, frequent visitors of the storage room are old men, who check the
integrity of their possessions or rearrange them periodically.
There are big CAs with no storage room. This does not mean, of cause,
that the attitude towards rubbish is different there. The corners of the corridor,
big shelves attached to the walls or suspended over the heads (if the height of
the ceiling allows such construction), the antechamber - all these still
successfully play the role of storage room, as in the classic period. Classic
descriptions of the whole barricades built of furniture, bicycles etc. are still
relevant to some extent. An important difference in this case is that commonly
the places for shelves, hooks and wardrobes are distributed definitely and strictly,
and the property is protected more jealously. This is my corner, not a common
storage room. Here is my property and my expansion to the common space. If I
see someone making something in my possessions, it automatically means a
quarrel. The storage room, on the contrary, is open and not so closely controlled.
The difference between big lumber-rooms and small auxiliary storage
facilities (in CAs where the both types of storage place are present) is in location
and content. Usually the small specialised facilities are attached to the kitchen
and mainly contain common use tools for cleaning, so no place in left for lumber.
Another specialised storage facility is a larder; to some extent it may adopt
several types of objects characteristic to lumber-room. The wide spreading of
refrigerators and the use of the improvised refrigerators arranged as shelves on a
window (Figs.__) have diminished the proper value of larders, and so they have
become an asylum for dusty jars. Today, mice and rats are mostly gone (it is in
the larder that the traps usually were put).
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