Communal Living in Russia: Photos
Apartment II. Common Areas: A corner of the kitchen: a sink and a toilet seat
  Summary
  A child's toilet seat is kept in the kitchen, by the door to the hallway. 2006.
  Basic Facts and Background
  When: 2006

Where: The kitchen of a large communal apartment in the prestigious center of St. Petersburg, home to over 20 people.

What: A corner of the kitchen to the right of the entrance. Here we see a large sewage pipe and a cold-water pipe. The sink with the white plastic runoff pipe was recently installed. The sink has no hot water. There is another sink in this kitchen which does have hot water, where the dishes are usually washed. See the photo "New pipes and hot water."

The rubber mat hanging above the sink is placed under the bowl or basin in which dishes are washed to keep the basin from touching the sink.

Next to the door leading from the kitchen to the hallway hangs a child's plastic toilet seat. The grownups usually use the seat on the toilet, which they first cover with strips of paper. In some families children use special seats. Since there are two lavatories and there is no way of knowing which one might be in use at any given moment, it is convenient to keep the seat somewhere between the two places. We glimpse similar toilet seats on the walls in the bathroom in the first half of the clip "A New Shower," Tour 3.

We see a little girl take the seat and then put it back in the clip "Cooking Saltimbocca" (Tour 3).

On the little stand under the toilet seat is somebody's covered garbage can; above the seat is a shelf for dish-washing sponges. On the shelf is somebody's forgotten toothbrush. See the close-up photograph, which shows the door in the hall and other details.

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