Lifestyle Content for the End of the World or a Usual Day in Yerevan

2026-03-27 - 08:21

Listen to the AI generated audio article. Your browser does not support the audio element. Lifestyle writing, as a genre, is linked to water. It flows freely through wellness centers and morning beauty routines. It pours from rain showers with different pressure settings, and fills freestanding bathtubs positioned in front of floor-to-ceiling windows with gorgeous views. In the lifestyle imagination, water is infinite, crystal clear, and of perfect temperature. Life proves this imagination wrong, especially in a post-Soviet city, where ageing Soviet infrastructure and new managers’ disinvestment have produced shortages that are experienced in daily life to varying degrees. Having spent most of my adult life in Moscow, I got used to summer pipe maintenance, a period lasting from a few weeks to a month when we would go completely without hot water. In Yerevan, not only hot water, but water in general might disappear during “planned maintenance” or, ad hoc, during urgent repairs and construction in the neighborhood. Though “planned” is always a vague descriptor, maintenance is planned in the sense that it will definitely happen, though not necessarily when or as announced. In my nine-story apartment building, water presence fluctuates for reasons no one has satisfactorily explained to me. Sometimes the water disappears regularly at night, then it doesn’t, and then it does again. In summer, the outages can stretch into days, marked by queues at the pulpulaks and shelves emptied of bottled water in nearby shops. With a new high-rise going up just outside my windows, I have been joking bitterly that soon we will all be bathing in the Hrazdan Gorge because the pipe system was not designed for this kind of load, and I highly doubt the developer will make any significant investment to address it. Add to this Veolia’s recent announcements about scheduled water provisioning in Yerevan, and it’s the perfect moment to produce a practical lifestyle content we all deserve. What follows is a guide to personal hygiene under infrastructural uncertainty. Reservoir(s) Within the makeshift apartment water system, first and foremost, there is the water itself, captured before it disappears. Every Yerevan apartment and office I’ve visited has a collection of vessels. Some make do with five-liter plastic bottles sold in supermarkets with drinking water. These bottles are refilled from the tap during good periods and lined up along the bathroom or toilet wall in a small, utilitarian installation. Some have twenty-liter plastic canisters, the kind used for petrol. And then there are also those with actual water storage tanks installed as a permanent solution, a definitive sign that water shortages have lasted long enough to stop pretending the situation is temporary. The reservoir(s) create a particular relationship with the bathroom. It is no longer simply a room for washing. It is also a pantry, a logistics hub, a place where resource management happens alongside personal hygiene. The aesthetics suffer somewhat. But that is the last thing to worry about in this situation. The calculus is constant: how much do I have? How much do I need, and how long might this last? You develop an intuitive understanding of daily water consumption that no fitness app has ever given you. My own calculus is that I need roughly 15 liters to function at a very basic, minimal level. This includes drinking, washing, tooth brushing, and a tiny bit of cooking. With more cooking and laundry, that number rises significantly. During Covid-19, when I lived in a village for half a year, I learned that around 80 liters is needed for one laundry cycle. I would fetch water from the spring in four trips and fill the semi-automatic washing machine in stages—20 litres two times for the actual wash and then the same for rinsing. But here, in Yerevan, with a fully automatic washing machine that needs an uninterrupted water source, I just wait for water to return. No running water, no laundry. Heating and Mixing System A kettle and/or a heating coil, along with a mixing basin, are the next elements of the system. For those who are most advanced or most pessimistic, there is also a petrol-powered generator, along with a canister of petrol, in case the electricity is also out. A typical kettle holds 1.7 liters. Washing requires approximately one kettle of boiling water mixed with five to seven liters of room-temperature water. This depends, though, on personal preferences for water temperature. Water is mixed in a large bowl, bucket, or basin, a multitask object used in a post-Soviet household for everything from a baptism ceremony to cooking for a large number of guests. The temperature is tested with a finger or elbow, as one does with an infant’s bathwater, adding a touch of absurdity that eventually feels entirely natural. Ladle Assembly My ladle collection includes several items. There is a large ladle for primary water distribution, a medium ladle for rinsing hair, and a small plastic scoop, technically meant for children playing in a sandbox. The scoop has proven ideal for targeted face washing. I also have two basins: one for mixing water until it is warm enough for bathing, and another for quick face washing and toothbrushing. The first holds about ten liters, the second up to five. Washing with ladles and basins, viewed from outside, resembles a trip to a hammam or village sauna—pour, lather with shampoo and shower gel, then rinse. Shaving in these conditions is much more of a hassle. Skin that does not get warm enough to accommodate the razor is easily cut. Still, shaving without injury is not impossible. Using shaving gel or hair conditioner, and then applying a good moisturizer (pharmacy products or natural oils), helps. Overall, hygiene and routines that once took a thoughtless 20 minutes now require planning, sequencing, and a mild engineering mindset. Back-Up Plans and Aesthetics of Adaptation Long-term residents of Yerevan learn to read the signs. Sometimes a notice appears near a building entrance announcing planned maintenance. These notices specify a window of disruption—two hours, four hours, a day. That window bears roughly the same relationship to reality as a weather forecast in a mountainous country. While directionally useful, it is rarely precise. Maintenance begins when it begins and ends when it ends. The unofficial early warning system is more reliable. If I see my neighbours carrying water bottles en masse, I know the disruption is imminent and likely severe. The building has its own informal communications infrastructure, passed between floors through the acoustic properties of old Soviet-era plumbing and the occasional corridor conversation. In any case, before any important meeting, social event, travel, or day requiring a fully glossy presentation, I check the night before to make sure enough water is stored and the kettle is operational. Be pessimistic, so to speak—then you are either right, or pleasantly surprised. This is risk management. Over time, I have noticed that this relationship with unreliable infrastructure produces a particular sensibility. You become an expert in quick recovery, the strategic deployment of dry shampoo, and wearing outfits that read as intentional regardless of conditions. Yerevan women who wash their hair with a kettle and a soup ladle and still walk out looking stunningly composed have achieved genuine resilience. Not the performed resilience of cold plunge culture, but the real kind, born of necessity and baptised in a large salad bowl. Mindfulness culture has been trying to sell us minimalism for decades, Yerevan’s water system delivers it free of charge. The gym solves the shower problem, which is why gym membership in Yerevan serves a dual function that is understood by everyone but stated by no one. Yes, you go to exercise. You also go because the gym has hot water with proper pressure. Friends with reliable water become an informal resource. “Come over for dinner” can, between the lines, include an additional offer: a functional shower beforehand. It is a form of hospitality no etiquette manual covers, and none needs to, because it is understood. I have experienced this hospitality many times in Moscow, and Yerevan has prolonged the tradition. What Lifestyle Is Actually About Lifestyle writing, at its best, is not about aspiration but about negotiation. Everyone negotiates with their circumstances to build something that works, something that lets them move through the world with a reasonable level of dignity and occasional pleasure. Those circumstances differ enormously. Some people negotiate with freestanding bathtubs. Others negotiate with kettles and ladles. The glossy media will not write about this. It is committed to the rain shower, the thermostatic control, and the stone basin carved from a single piece of travertine. That is their prerogative, and that content has its audience. But somewhere in Yerevan, or any other post-Soviet city at this precise moment, someone is carrying a kettle down a hallway and calculating exactly how much hot water they need to look like someone who did not have to carry a kettle down a hallway. They will succeed; they usually do. This is the real lifestyle practice, one very much suited to the end of the world—the moment we happen to be living in right now. P.S. Several years ago, I was presenting at a conference in Birmingham. When I arrived at the registration desk of my Best Western hotel, the receptionist warned that there was no hot water, as the boiler needed repair. I immediately asked whether there was a kettle in the room and whether I could borrow several pans from the kitchen. The man asked, “Madame, where are you from?” I responded, “From post-USSR.” He grinned and commented, “Strong, resilient people.” Well, yes, that we are. Comment Cover photo by Roubina Margossian. LIFESTYLE Contemplation March’s SALT issue, “Contemplation”, takes a reflective look at how we live, unwind and make sense of the world around us. 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