After more than a decade spent considering myself a New Yorker I have finally left Manhattan for cheaper pastures (Philadelphia). I am, of course, obliged to tell you all about it. One does not get out of Metropolis quietly. No, ever since Joan Didion wrote Goodbye to All That in 1967, anyone who moves out of New York (or London) must file a Why I Left essay on their way out. It’s the law. And I’m very law-abiding.
I’m also, luckily for you, on a strict word limit. Therefore I’m going to have to boil down my completely unique, never-before-experienced reflections on how the combination of having a new baby and living in a one-bedroom flat throughout the pandemic made me realise I wasn’t young enough or rich enough to have the sort of life I wanted in New York. And what sort of life did I want? The pandemic, middle age and motherhood made me figure out what was really important: having a washing machine in my house. They are surprisingly hard to come by in Manhattan.
Happily, dreams do come true! For the price of a tiny hovel in NYC, I’ve just moved into a big old house with a washer and dryer in Philly. There’s even a garden where I could, hypothetically, air dry my clothes. This, by the way, is something Americans don’t do. They’re very weird about it. Some communities have even tried to ban people from drying their clothes outside, which gave rise to a whole right-to-dry movement. There are now safe states where you are legally protected if you want to air your clean laundry.
I digress. I am not here to opine on the US’s odd relationship with laundry. I am here to say that I have made a very good life choice. “So much space, so much house,” I thought, when we moved in last week. Amazing! And then there was a leak in the basement and ants invaded the kitchen. Still, at least I have a big shiny washing machine. I loaded it up the other day and, with a little shiver of pleasure, pressed “start”. And guess what? The bloody thing is broken. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
