I’d dumped before, but never like this.

A computer chair, a chest of drawers, an electric fan, a cd rack (the same rack we’d picked up a few months earlier from outside a block of flats up the street). Helpful things, practical things, things that a household could always find a space for – even if it was just in the garage. They always went from the footpath outside our place within the hour.

Dumping a six seater (seven at a squeeze) sofa – plus cushions – seemed to be pushing it. A sofa is a big call. Most people already have one, and would hardly have space for a second… To transport it would have required a ute, or three trips back and forth on foot.

‘It’ll be gone within the day’, was Tone’s ambitious wager.

I bet him 50 it wouldn’t.

We did it early – round 7. Tone knew how uncomfortable I was about dragging our old couch onto the street. In a complex whose security was swift and brutal, who knew how they might react?

‘Best to do it early, when there’s no one around.’

No one except anyone going for a brisk morning walk, no one except the only person I didn’t want to see us performing this illegal act – Benita. I saw her coming, blushed at the thought of my childhood idol thinking badly of me, and refused to make eye contact. Tony may have waved.

We did our best to make it appealing – set it all up nicely in the morning sun. Plumped and flipped the cushions, artfully arranged the pillows to hide any unfortunate stains. ‘Within the day.’ Sure.

At 10, when we took a cleaning break and went for Campos and Sonoma, it was still there. On the way back, we gave a demonstration. Stretched out as if back in the apartment, we enjoyed our coffees and toasts there in the sun, just to show any curious in the overlooking apartments how it was done.

We tossed around the idea (perhaps spooked that it was still there three hours later?) of it staying there forever, as a community couch. One that everyone could enjoy. An installation artwork? With a visitors book? It had certainly been a happy place, seen many a happy moment. ‘Old blue’ had started life at the beach house, then grew up and went to the city. The couch in a share house sees some things – a number of our friends and relatives have admitted getting molecular on the modular. The goodwill that must have seeped into it over the years, along with beer, rose, vodka infusions and bodily fluids. It was a sad moment to let it go.

At the end of a long cleaning day, driving the car to our new home in mum and dad’s, we did a loop past the spot. Couch still there.

‘It’s not been 24 hours….’

I felt a bit hurt, sorry for it, sad to see it sit there so neglected. Thought back to the days when I first moved out of home. When furniture was a luxury. Our house then was filled mainly with stuff lovingly bestowed from mum and dad, things they’d kept (as they upgraded) for the day we’d move out.

To walk down the street and see a (not old, ‘retro’) coffee table was a happy day indeed. It helped that I drove a gold Volvo station wagon at the time, and could fit all manner of things in the back.

‘Asking the universe’ we used to call it. Need a bedside table? Ask the universe and it shall provide. It worked enough times that we started to believe it. The ad campaign, run by the government/council/whatever/[IKEA??] at the time [‘Dumping is dumb’] made no sense to us at all. Dumping was a good thing, socially, environmentally. We never bought anything. Neither did we sell it. It fostered a sense of community. Instilled in us the value of recycling. We learnt not to be picky. Saw the good in what was out there. We were thankful and grateful, and when we no longer needed we were generous in turn.

On the back of those values, we left our couch on the street.

Last night we went back, for a final clean of the house and to drop the keys off. We went in the front way. On the way out we did a loop past the spot.

It was gone.